


Captive Prince tumblr ficlets

by Fahye



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-05-24 20:31:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 45
Words: 35,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6165859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fahye/pseuds/Fahye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short ficlets posted on tumblr in response to prompts. Mostly Damen/Laurent, but highly varied in content!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Charls finding out who Damen is

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Сон в летний полдень](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11187027) by [Alina_Petrova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alina_Petrova/pseuds/Alina_Petrova)
  * Translation into Italiano available: [Sogno di un mezzogiorno d'estate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11232324) by [Alina_Petrova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alina_Petrova/pseuds/Alina_Petrova)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Charls the successful cloths merchant finding out who Damen actually is._

“Come this way,” the servant said.

Charls looked around with interest as he was led through the palace. Every few yards he also glanced over his shoulder to make sure that the men carrying his huge leather books, full of the samples that represented the best fabrics he had to offer, were not endangering them through careless handling.

Charls fiddled with the hem of his tunic, brushed away a tiny speck of dust, then smoothed it. Yes. The green one had been a good choice. This was one of the most important meetings of his life: surely, it was a short step from being invited to provide fabric for the royal wedding clothes to being named Official Cloth Purveyor to the Crown.

He wondered what King Damianos would be like, or if he would even be present. These political marriages; it was a pity, really. The Veretian King was such a bright, attractive young man. But that was how it had to be for aristocrats. Charls thought fondly of his own wife and his lover, the one in Arles and the other in the busy trade port of Basouy. Oh, Floriane had been his old employer’s daughter, and marrying her had guaranteed Charls access to the man’s trade contacts and production sites when he was setting up on his own, but Charls wouldn’t have agreed to it if he hadn’t also genuinely liked her and respected her as a shrewd businesswoman in her own right. Marital harmony was worth a thousand bales of silk.

The servant bowed Charls through a final door, the heavy pile of sample-books was deposited on the floor next to him, and all the men retreated.

There was someone else in the room, who turned from the window when he hears Charls enter: it was the King’s companion, the tall Patran lord, who had met and talked with Charles in an inn and then, later, played at being the King’s assistant. He was dressed simply but well, in Akielon garb that was clearly of the finest grade linen.

“Lamen!” said Charls, delighted. “Or no, is it Alfar, as it was when we first met? I must admit, given everything that has happened, I have never been sure of your true name.”

The Patran, whatever his name was, gave Charls a look that started out surprised and settled somewhere between discomfort and hilarity. Before he could speak, however, the door opened again and His Majesty Laurent the King of Vere strode into the room. He had the same open and irrepressible confidence of manner as he had when playing merchant or prostitute, but Charls thought that his throne suited him: there was a relaxation to his shoulders, a sense that he had finally stepped into the role he’d been born for. He was not wearing the Akielon style, but an embroidered shirt tucked into his Veretian trousers.

“Hello, Charls.”

“Your Majesty!” Charls swept a bow, making sure to flip his cloak over his arm in a way that showed off the quality of the wool. “I was just saying to your-–” assistant? bodyguard? “-– _friend_ here that I remain ignorant of his name. Much as I have enjoyed our various exploits under false guise.”

There was a pause, so pregnant with unsaid things that Charls was puzzled. And then something began to sparkle in the King’s gaze that Charls, veteran of hundreds of fierce negotiating tables, recognised as the birth of a wild idea.

The King directed that sparkling gaze onto possibly-Lamen.

“And how long do you think you could maintain it this time?” said the Patran, as if responding to something the King had said. He was looking at King Laurent with a fondness that went far past familiarity and into something else. And the King was looking back.

How romantic! How unfortunate! And here the man was, to loyally support his royal beloved, even in the task of preparing for his marriage to another. Charls was touched.

“Laurent,” said Lamen.

“Oh, very well,” said the King. He turned back to Charls. “Charls, this is King Damianos of Akielos.”

Charls opened his mouth. Charls closed his mouth. He looked, unable to help himself, from the top of _King Damianos’s_ head, down to the sandals on _King Damianos’s_ feet, and back up again.

“I know,” said King Laurent, as if in commiseration. “But just think how many yards of fabric I shall be forced to buy from you, in order to cover him.”


	2. Laurent having nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Laurent having nightmares and trouble sleeping and maybe Damen waking him up, but just talking, not touching, because of past incidents where Laurent didn't realize who was touching him and also fluff? ☺️_

“Laurent, wake up. It’s just me. There is nobody else here. Laurent.”

There is sweat on Laurent’s brow and his throat. He is breathing erratically, with creases of pain on his lovely face. Damen’s chest feels as though he has swallowed a bowl of burning soup; he has to move quickly, when Laurent’s entire upper body jerks to the side, in order to avoid Laurent touching him. He raises his voice, but keeps it steady. Calm.

“Wake up. It’s a dream. Laurent.”

The sound Laurent makes as his eyes fly open is the worst thing that Damen has ever heard. Damen looks down at his clenched hands, tight and aching with futile anger, and sees that he has ripped a hole in the sheet.

Laurent’s ribcage is heaving. He fumbles with his left hand and takes hold of his right shoulder, over the thick knot of scar tissue. His blue eyes are still dazed, but the mist is clearing from them, moment by moment.

“You’re safe,” Damen says. “We both are.”

Laurent closes his eyes again. Damen doesn’t move. He watches the shivers subside, and the breaths come more evenly through Laurent’s parted lips.

After a short while, Laurent extends one hand, blindly, in Damen’s direction, sliding it palm-upwards on the sheets. Damen picks it up in both of his own and holds Laurent’s fingers against his own closed lips. All of him is longing to do more, do gather Laurent entirely into his arms, to kiss him until the sour fright is gone and there’s nothing left in their minds but pleasure. But this isn’t about what Damen wants.

Laurent’s cool gaze finds him.

“It could have been worse,” Laurent says. “The night after we fought, at Marlas, I dreamed I killed you. I’ve been waiting to have that one again.”

Damen tightens his grip before he can think better of it, but Laurent doesn’t seem to mind. His own fingers tighten as well, and he uses their joined hands as an anchor to haul himself closer, his silvery moonlit head invading Damen’s pillow with calm entitlement. He rests a foot over Damen’s ankle, settles his face in the hollow of Damen’s neck and exhales.

Damen has dreamt of the flogging post, and of Laurent’s hand around his on the hilt of a knife angled towards Laurent’s heart; Laurent’s arrogant gaze commanding him, and Damen helplessly obeying. Blood spilling between Laurent’s full lips.

He wraps one arm around Laurent, holding him close. He leaves the other between them, fingers tangled through Laurent’s, until Laurent settles back into sleep.


	3. Nikandros and Laurent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _nikandros and laurent learning to get along_

“Damianos says you like card games. Are you any good?”

Laurent looks up. At his elbow and spread out on the table are a stack of dry treatises from the founding days of both countries. He is putting together his first set of notes for the meeting of councils, where the terrible headache of combining governments will begin.

Nikandros, hovering with a pack of cards in hand, looks like he is reconsidering whatever impulse led him here in the first place. Laurent considers and instantly discards the possibility of an easy deception.

“I am,” he says. He pushes the pen and parchment aside, a clear invitation.

“Cards. Riding. Swordplay. Is there anything you aren’t skilled at?” The man sounds irritated.

“Singing,” Laurent says, after a moment.

“Truly?”

Laurent shoots him a look through his lashes. “No,” he says.

Nikandros snorts through his nose, a huff of exasperation that borders on amusement, and sits down. He deals the cards. Laurent has the sense of trying to formulate a useful plan of attack while staring at a map that has had half its major features crossed out.

He says, “You don’t have to be my friend.”

“I’m not your friend. Your Majesty.”

“But you are being,” Laurent says, “friendly.”

Nikandros frowns at his hand, and moves a card from one place to another within in. When he looks back at Laurent there is a frankness to his gaze. “I didn’t realise,” Nikandros says shortly. “Damianos-–he’s your _only_ friend. You really don’t have anyone else.”

Nikandros is right. Laurent had Auguste, and then he had no one. Supporters, yes. Allies. Men more loyal to him than he deserved. But nobody was to him what Nikandros is to Damen.

“I never had the knack of it,” Laurent says.

Nikandros doesn’t look like he believes that, but neither does he argue. He is handsome, Laurent supposes, with a straight freckled nose and a firm chin. He might look even more so, if he smiled, but Laurent can only speculate on that point.

“Here’s a tip,” Nikandros says. “Don’t flog them half to death as an opening gesture.”

Laurent stares at his cards, pinched between his suddenly pale fingertips. He has two fives. He has a ten. He has a queen.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Laurent says.

Nikandros throws down a pair of sevens. They play, for a while, in relative silence. Laurent loses the pair of gloves tucked through his belt, and his pen. He gains a sharp knife with a hawk etched onto the blade.

“Another hand?” Laurent asks, during a pause. Twilight is deepening outside.

Nikandros says, “Do you love him?”

Laurent goes perfectly still, watching Nikandros for information. For anything.

“Do you doubt it?” he says, finally.

“No,” Nikandros says. “I don’t. Not since I heard what you did for him, at the Kingsmeet. But I wonder if you’ve even said it aloud to anyone.”

Laurent has not. Suddenly there is a weight on his tongue.

“Yes,” he says. It takes all his strength. It is like the last few exhausted steps to the top of a mountain, to find the onwards path sloping down with the world spread out below. “I love him.”

Nikandros, gathering up the cards, gives a final nod. “All right,” he says. “Good night. Keep the knife.”

“Of course I’m keeping it,” Laurent says.

“I’ll win it back next time,” Nikandros says.


	4. a conversation about the Regent's abuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _I'd love to see your take on a conversation between Damen and Laurent about the Regent abusing Laurent._

“It’s not you I’m disgusted by.”

“Really,” said Laurent. His voice was colourless. “How are you making that distinction?”

“That’s not fair,” Damen said gently. “To either of us.”

“ _Really_ ,” said Laurent again. “So you would be perfectly happy for me to climb into your arms and describe, in great detail, exactly what my uncle required of me when-–when he f–-”

He couldn’t finish. The cold control faltered, then remade itself under Damen’s eyes. Anyone touching Laurent at that moment would have been lucky to keep their hand.

Damen wished, helplessly, that he could drag them both to a few minutes ago, when Laurent had been teasing him about how slow and dopey Damen’s face looked while recovering from his second orgasm, while slipping out of bed to fetch water, as he usually did. Their hands had touched on the cup, and several things had fallen hideously into place in Damen’s mind with a clatter that must have been audible, he had thought numbly, from the speed with which Laurent had snatched his own hand back and the unsteady force with which he’d set down the pitcher.

“Come back to bed. Forget it,” Damen said now, and knew at once it was the wrong thing to say.

“Forget it,” Laurent said. “Yes. Why did I not think of that?”

“We don’t have to talk about it. You should stop thinking of it, if it causes you pain.”

“Of course,” Laurent said, steady. “And children should stop being scared of the dark, because that is silliness.”

Damen struggled for control of his expression, heartsick and frustrated. He felt like a man in a room strewn with delicate pots and steel-toothed traps: no matter which way he stepped, he would do damage.

“I knew what would happen in the Kingsmeet,” Laurent said.

It was like being punched.

“Part of me knew. I’d known ever since–when the clansmen had us, in the mountains.” He looked at Damen. “It took six fighters to keep you down, and all the man did was touch me over my clothes.”

“Laurent–-”

“It was the best weapon he had, and I could have unarmed him by a single conversation with you,” Laurent said. “But I didn’t. Do not dare suggest that reasoned logic has any place here.”

Damen closed his mouth, as it did not seem to be doing him any good. He nodded, instead, and forced himself to relax, leaning back onto his hands where they were settled underneath the pillow.

“I know it was not my fault. I knew that by sixteen. But…” Laurent was closer now. He sat on the edge of the bed, within touching range. His face, which had been so entirely closed off, was beginning to show cracks of emotion at the edges. “Shame is like the dark,” he said. “You build it with your mind. I will–talk about it,” Laurent said, as though chewing shards of glass, “if you want me to.”

Damen leaned across and kissed the stubborn, cautious mouth. It softened under his. “I will listen,” he said, “if and when you want me to. And not before.”


	5. art university AU: part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _an AU where Laurent and Damen are both Art majors in university, but Laurent is a classical painter and Damen is a sculptor who is very adamant on having Laurent model for his project. Laurent is not impressed but is still secretly amused._
> 
> This ficlet now comes with [amazing art by xyai!](http://xyai.tumblr.com/post/140437633748/hello-i-saw-the-prompt-request-and-thought-of)

“Surely,” Laurent says, “you can find someone else.”

“I want you,” Damen says.

“Why?”

Laurent waits for some kind of stammered comment about his looks; maybe Damen will be very original and invoke someone other than Botticelli. Laurent spent enough time staring into mirrors during self-portraiture class to know exactly what he looks like. This is not the first, second, or fifth time he has been approached about modeling.

“Your charming personality, of course,” says Damen dryly.

Laurent gives him a flat look.

“The way you hold yourself,” Damen says. “The way you move. Like there’s something huge underneath, and you’re keeping it leashed.”

“Keep working on that blurb,” Laurent says, to hide his surprise.

“I like it,” Damen says. “I like the way you are.” His smile is audible.

Laurent hooks his toe viciously over the crossbar of his stool, and presses it there hard enough to hurt. He stares at his canvas and tries to recapture the thought he’d been having about shadows in the top left of this landscape, before Damen-–the cheerful darling of the sculpture department, whose senior thesis around the re-imagination of classical bronzes has half the faculty in fawning hysterics–-wandered into the studio to launch this pestering campaign for the use of Laurent’s body.

It would almost be thinkable, except for the fact that _classical_ equates to _nude_ even if you are re-imagining it. Apparently.

“Please?” Damen adds. “Surely you aren’t worried about your body image.”

“Not everyone is blasé about nudity,” Laurent says calmly.

“You’re an art student. You’ve done life drawing from models.”

“That’s their job.”

“Of course I can _pay_ you, if that’s the issue.“ 

Damen has raised his voice in exasperation. The other two painters still in the studio glance around, and Laurent bites the inside of his cheek. Damen standing here earnestly offering to give him money for services unspecified is not at all helpful. Laurent had to shut down the vast amounts of speculation about his prettiness by being thoroughly and indiscriminately cold in the first semester of freshman year, until his reputation swung wildly the other way.

“That’s not the issue.”

“Then what is it?” Damen leans against the wall. One dusted and spattered sleeve of his flannel shirt is coming untucked from where it’s been rolled up above his elbow. His jeans have a large, thready hole through which one brown knee can be seen.

Laurent forces himself to look back at his palette.

“If you are going to sculpt me naked, then you can be naked while you sculpt me. Balance of power. That’s the offer.”

He swirls the tip of his finest brush through the orange-red he’s just mixed, then adds a few flecks of it, very precise, to the underside of a cloud. He waits for Damen to leave.

“Okay,” Damen says.

~

“How was your day?” asks Auguste.

“Fine.” Laurent sits, rigidly upright on the edge of the couch, clutching his sketchbook to his chest.

Auguste appears in front of him with two mugs of tea, which he sets down on the coffee table. He smiles at Laurent. It is the calm, fond, ever-so-slightly smug smile of the firstborn who took over the family business and is overachieving his way into the pages of the _Wall Street Journal_ , thereby allowing his younger brother to run away to art school and probably never earn any real money in his life.

Auguste is far too nice to ever say that part aloud, of course.

“How are things with that guy you’re still pretending you don’t like?”

There’s no way Auguste misses the colour finding its gleeful way into Laurent’s cheeks. Blazoned in his mind, bright and inescapable like a fucking three-canvas triptych, is the image of Damen, looking at Laurent with easy admiration and total focus as he sped through the initial sketches. Damen sculpting with clay in his black hair, clay on his bare chest. Clay smeared all the way up the ridiculous muscles of his arms, which are probably like that from doing ridiculous sculptor things like hauling scrap metal out of dumpsters and lifting bags of cement and pouring bronze.

“I. I may have miscalculated,” says Laurent.


	6. Nikandros POV of Damen/Laurent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _If you feel like it, could you write something from Nikandros POV? His views on Damen+Laurent canon/au/whatever._

The sky is heavy with clouds when they approach the palace gates, and the air is softly promising rain. The sunlight is dulled. There is nevertheless enough of it to catch and gleam on the yellow head that is visible on the ramparts, standing apart from the guards.

Nikandros glances at his oldest friend, who has been alternately chafing and morose for the past two weeks, and who now, gazing up at Laurent, looks like a man coming across a clear stream of water after stumbling through the desert.

“Stop making that face,” Damianos says, not looking at Nikandros.

“I was going to say the same thing to you.”

Damianos smiles and kicks his horse into a final burst of speed, moving ahead of his men, through the gate and into the courtyard.

Nikandros sighs. He’s not unsympathetic. Lazar is another of the mingled Veretian and Akielon troop who accompanied Damianos on this extended tour of the surrounding forts while flushing out bands of mercenary clansmen; _Lazar_ has been staring into their nightly fires and good-naturedly accepting the vulgar suggestions about which part of Pallas’s anatomy he misses most, and Nikandros himself has high hopes of a friendly tumble with one of the freedwomen working in the kitchens here.

However, it is still difficult for Nikandros to reconcile what he knows of Damianos’s exuberant bedroom tastes-–from many, many drunken conversations-–and the coolly collected Veretian, who looks as though he would barely deign to lift a finger, let alone muster any kind of encouragement, while being fucked. Lazar has confided to Nikandros that none of the Veretians have managed to get their heads around the idea either, despite the Prince–now the King–being a longstanding figure of popular fantasy.

 _Not the real thing, though_ , Lazar added, hastily. _Gods, can you imagine? It’d be like trying to lick an icicle._ ,

Nikandros agrees with that comparison. As thirsty as you were at the time, it’d be cold beyond belief, and you’d be lucky to get away without losing some of your skin.

But then, Laurent’s looks are such that even a steadier head than that of Damianos, with his weakness for fair hair and blue eyes, might easily be turned, and stay turned. No matter his deficiencies in bed.

None of this is any comfort to Nikandros when he finds himself, half an hour later, pausing in his search for Damianos in order to sign off the acquisitions report for their tour so that it can be taken to the desk of the royal treasurer. He can hear Damianos’s voice, in the room that is the man’s private study, and Laurent’s as well. When Nikandros peers through the crack of the door, which is ajar, he sees that they are standing close together. There is something heated and deliberate about the foot of space between their bodies: like the choicest morsel on a plate, left uneaten until the last moment so that the anticipation of it can be savoured for the length of the meal.

“–-a very strenuous camping trip,” Laurent is saying.

“Yes,” says Damianos. His voice is low and amused. “I hear in my absence you have only negotiated new terms of trade with the Vaskian Empire, overhauled the entire system of grain taxation, and arranged hostage-taking by the major Veretian estates for the sons of the kyroi.”

“ _Fostering_ ,,” says Laurent.

“What did I say?” Damianos grins at him.

“I also talked Makedon and Jeurre down from no less than three duels of honour over misunderstandings.”

“You’ll have to let Makedon fight sometime,” Damianos says. “Otherwise he gets snappy.”

Laurent gives a very soft laugh. “I’ll remember that.” His shoulders are drooping. It is the most physically worn that Nikandros has ever seen him, and for a moment he’s worried that there is some looming political crisis, for Laurent to look that way, but then he realises that Laurent just looks…tired. As any normal person might look tired.

“It was no more stressful than the easiest day of surviving in my uncle’s court,” Laurent says. “I had not realised it was so easy to become…accustomed.”

“To what?” Damianos asks

“Support,” Laurent says. The side of his mouth curves, rueful. “Partnership.”

Damianos touches Laurent’s hair, and then the space closes: Laurent is stepping forward, into his arms, to be kissed. It is _artless_ ,, which is a word that Nikandros would never have thought to apply to Laurent of Vere. It is sweet, and hungry, and eager; his arms are around Damianos’s neck and Damianos’s hands are roaming over Laurent’s body. Nobody watching this kiss would ever think that the people involved are anything but joyful and deeply intimate in bed.

After half an age, during which Nikandros’s sense of privacy loses a brief and heated battle with his sense of curiosity, Laurent pulls back. Again he looks like he has never looked in Nikandros’s experience of him. King Laurent looks like exactly what he is: a young man of twenty-one who has his whole life stretching ahead, and who is fathoms deep in love.

“Next time I go camping,” Damianos murmurs, “I will bring you along.”

“Oh? Thrown over the back of your horse?”

The air between them sings. They are smiling.

Nikandros finds that he is smiling too. He shakes his head, takes two silent steps backwards, and walks away down the corridor.


	7. modern Melbourne bakery AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _How about an AU where Damen runs a bakery and every morning at 5am, when he opens and preps for the shop, he comes across Laurent passing by to go into the convenience store a few blocks down. One day he was the courage to stop him. Hopefully curiosity doesn't kill the cat._
> 
> (Featuring: the most Melbourne bakery AU ever to exist? Possibly.)

It’s the first chilly Monday after Anzac Day when the most attractive person that Damen has ever seen crosses his path at 4:55am on the dot. Damen actually walks past the door to his own bakery, has to retrace his steps, and takes three tries to fit the key in the lock, he’s so distracted by the memory of the flawless face and the shock of neat blond hair.

The next day, the man is there again. Damen manages to open the door on the second try, this time.

It becomes routine. Like clockwork. Damen walking one way down the street to open the bakery and turn on the ovens; the man walking the other way, a leather messenger bag slung over his shoulder, never making more than peremptory eye contact. The street traffic is thin, at that hour, and foot traffic even thinner. There’s not much in the way of natural dawn light, as the days get shorter, though the street is well-lit, orange streetlights spilling down an artificial glow.

Damen develops a furious curiosity about who the man is. He looks young; younger than Damen, early twenties at the very most. Is he a suicidally dedicated finance intern, on his way into the CBD? A shift worker? An early-morning gym goer? (“A vampire?” says Nikandros sarcastically, not looking up from the plait of yellow brioche taking shape under his hands.)

When Damen finally commits to a mild level of stalking, he learns that the man always heads to the 7-11 on the corner of the block and always exits with a cup of terrible 7-11 coffee, which confuses Damen. Sure, it’s the only place selling coffee at 5am, but this man looks like the kind of person who would eviscerate a barista for getting the froth ratio wrong. How can he drink that swill? Surely he has at least a French plunger at home?

It would be nice if one day he came into the bakery so he could find out what he is missing; at least twenty blogs will attest to the fact that they make _excellent_ coffee. But maybe he is never around here during opening hours. And also, common sense points out, how would he even know that Damen works there?

So Damen caves to Nikandros, who has been bugging him for months about marketing and uniforms, and has T-shirts printed with the bakery logo on them, where it will show above their aprons. The day he first wears one on his walk to work, the blond man’s eyes flick over it without any change in his expression.

He still doesn’t show up in the bakery. But two days later he is carrying a canvas tote bag that says MONASH LAW STUDENTS’ SOCIETY and Damen feels a pleased glow, hot in his stomach, that a line of communication, however tentative, has been opened.

They exchange, via various accessories, their taste in music. They establish a shared familiarity with the Marvel universe. Damen, against all reason, lugs to work in one hand the precious, falling-apart hardcover copy of _The Fellowship of the Ring_ which belonged to his father and which he has read twice a year almost since he can remember. The blond man turns up the next day carrying an equally cumbersome _Sherlock Holmes_ omnibus, and there’s something close to a smile playing around his eyes as they pass one another, under the orange light, in easy silence.

And then there’s the awful, horrible month after Damen wears his Magpies scarf, not meaning anything by it; not thinking about anything beyond the fact of the game that coming weekend. It gets him a startled look, closer to a real expression than anything else has been. The next day the man is wrapped in a Carlton scarf that muffles the lower half of his face, and he stalks past Damen without looking at him at all.

(Damen is overcome with a deep feeling of betrayal. And then is distracted enough by feverish internal renditions of the Prologue from _Romeo and Juliet_ that he burns an entire batch of croissants. Nikandros, a totally unsympathetic St Kilda man, is not impressed.)

After some thought, Damen’s peace offering is his Bisexual Captain America shirt. He wears it under a leather jacket which he leaves open, unzipped, showing the shield picked out in pink and blue. He’s nervous about it. Too obvious? Or too obscure? Too dressed-down for this man, who seems to be allergic to anything without a collar, and who wears hipsterish glasses that somehow manage to proclaim themselves far too expensive to be worn by actual hipsters?

But, three days after that, there is a tiny rainbow flag pin in the lapel of his black coat.

Damen looks him in the eye and smiles, daring. The man hastens his steps; Damen can’t see what the twitch at the corner of his mouth might have become, or if the flush on his cheeks was from anything more than the cold.

It’s a bright, mild afternoon in August when Damen, taking his first real breath since the furious lunch rush began, gazes out the window and sees the blond man stepping off the tram where it has stopped just outside the bakery. He is holding yet another 7-11 cup, for which there is _no earthly excuse_ , given the hour of day.

Damen’s coherent thought stops there. Instinct grabs hold of his muscles. He snatches the double-shot latte that Pallas has just finished making, ignores the man’s yelp of protest, and dashes out into the street. His heart is pounding like drums.

He will admit, later, that he probably could have come up with a romantic overture better than dashing the stupid paper convenience store cup out of the man’s hands, so that it tumbles into the gutter and spills there in a burned-smelling brown trickle, and holding out his own coffee at the end of a stiff, frantic arm.

“Here,” he blurts. “It’s ten times better than that rubbish. I promise.”

He manages to stop himself before he says any of the other words on his tongue: _come inside, I’ll make you palmiers. I’ll make you anything. Come inside and smile at me._

The man stands motionless, blinking. Two fingers of his hand are curled around the strap of his messenger bag. Then he reaches out and takes the cup, warily, like he is watching for any sign that Damen is about to do something else violent and absurd.

He lifts the coffee to his mouth and takes a sip. He doesn’t move his gaze from Damen’s. Up close and in the daylight, his eyes are a gorgeous and fiercely clear dark blue.

When he lowers the cup, he is smiling faintly.

“Adequate,” he says.


	8. Emperor's New Groove AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _The Emperor's New Groove AU. Jokastor as Yzma and Kronk, Damen gets turned into some kind of giant animal and runs into Laurent on one of the super important espionage trips In Disguise that he's so fond of. Laurent wants Jokastor out of power because geopolitics, Damen would like to have revenge and also thumbs. A deal is struck and shenanigans happen and it's all very dramatic._

“So, uh. Who are you?” Damen asks, once the man has resheathed his sword.

The man–-young, blond, heart-stoppingly pretty if you’re into that kind of thing, which Damen unfortunately is–-waves a hand. To his credit, he was impressively composed when first faced with a talking bear, and now seems more inclined to be curious about Damen as a phenomenon than to display the least amount of fear.

“I am no one. A villager.”

“You are not,” Damen says. “Nobody in this village could afford a sword like that.”

The man lifts his chin. It’s an excellent chin, beneath an excellent mouth, and–-this is not the time for Damen to be noticing these things.

“Very well. I am…Damianos of Akielos. I let rumours of my death be announced in order to live among the people, in disguise. The better to know my kingdom.”

“That’s funny,” Damen says.

A quelling look. “Why is it funny?”

“Well,” says Damen, “we can’t _both_ be Damianos of Akielos.”

The man freezes. For the second time in the past five minutes, he looks Damen up and down. It takes a significant amount of neck movement to complete.

“If it came down to a popular vote,” he says, icily, “I suspect I would win. Given that Damianos of Akielos is widely held to be a human being and not, in fact, a giant animal.”

Fantastic. Now Damen has people stealing his throne _and_ someone threatening to steal his identity.

“I was turned into a bear. By magic.” He can feel his muscles bunching in anger beneath the thick pelt. “My brother and-–and one of my closest advisors. They betrayed me, and drugged me, and dumped me out here, so they could tell everyone I was dead and claim the throne for themselves. I need help getting back to Ios, so I can force them to turn me back.”

The blue eyes turn calculating. “Help. In exchange for what?”

“I’m the king,” Damen says. “Whatever you want.”

“You don’t know the way back to your own capital?” the man says. “I think I’m the more convincing Damianos after all.”

“Of course I do,” Damen growls. It is actually a growl. It feels odd, but very satisfying. “But I can’t exactly walk back into the palace looking like this. Jokaste and Kastor–” another growl, on his brother’s name “–will have me killed on sight, and that’s if someone in the city doesn’t do it for them first. I need a disguise.”

“You mean a _handler_ ,” the man says. A vaguely sadistic note of pleasure has slid into his voice. “And a collar. Perhaps with a chain.”

“Perhaps,” Damen says. He’s not sure he likes the sound of that, but he’s able to see the logic in it; performing animals don’t usually stroll around without decoration or restraint. “Does that mean you’ll help me?”

“All right. Yes. You have a deal.”

Damen puts out an enormous paw. The man lays his palm over it without hesitation; Damen’s claws lie right over the vulnerable veins of his wrist. A shiver runs up Damen’s arm.

“Can I know your real name, now?” he says.

“Oh, of course.” The man steps back and inclines his upper body in a gorgeous and courtly mannerism. “Laurent. Of Vere.”

Damen swallows. Hard. “Oh.”

“Whatever I want, I think you said?” Prince Laurent of Vere smiles like a stream sparkling over jagged rocks. “Let’s start with Delfeur.”


	9. Laurent pretending to be a pet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _laurent and damen. laurent pretending to be a pet - roleplay._

It’s a game. That’s obvious from the moment Damen sets eyes on Laurent.

Still, it takes him a few moments to gather his wits enough that he feels prepared to play. Laurent is reclining on one of the low couches in their bedchamber, propped up on one elbow, with more skin on display than Damen has seen outside of times when he was actually naked.

He is wearing the sapphire earring. Damen’s blood heats at the sight of it.

“Who let you in here?” Damen says.

Laurent gathers his limbs together and sits up. The necklaces hanging around his neck and halfway down his bare chest tinkle and chime gently as he moves. One of them is a double string of diamonds set in white gold, which Damen recognises-–with a flare of amusement bordering on alarm–-from a painting of one of Laurent’s ancestors. It is probably kept under guard in the bowels of the treasury. It is ancient, and beautifully wrought, and priceless.

Laurent wears it as carelessly as a fairground bauble.

“No one. I let myself in.” He regards Damen with a blatantly assessing sweep of his eyes. “Though I’m not sure yet if it will be worth my while.”

Damen smiles. “Expensive, are you?”

“Very.”

“Luckily for you,” Damen says, “I happen to be the king of the New Artesian Empire.”

Laurent stands and moves closer, sinuous and poised. The sapphire glints like stars in a pool, where it hangs down among the soft and gleaming locks of his hair. There is a similar glint of silvery paint at the corners of his blue eyes.

“But I hear there are two kings,” he says. The look he casts at Damen is direct and devastating. “Wouldn’t your husband be upset?”

The desire to touch him is like a muscle cramp. Damen flattens his hands by his sides, then decides-–no, there’s no need to. He can reach out. He can inspect what’s being offered, take it as his due.

He rubs his thumb up the centre of Laurent’s throat until it rests just beneath Laurent’s lips. He moves in close enough to feel the warmth radiating from Laurent’s bare skin.

“He would be furious.”

Laurent’s smile is encouragement. “But?”

Damen says in a rough, commanding voice he hardly recognises as his own, “But you are irresistible.” He kisses one side of Laurent’s pale and flawless neck. “You are completely exquisite.” He kisses the other side. A sound that’s barely a sigh, a breath with burred edges, emerges from Laurent’s lips. “You know that you are.”

“Fine words,” Laurent says. “You don’t even know what I’m like in bed.”

“I can guess.”

“Very well,” Laurent says, eyes gleaming. “Guess.”

Damen lifts his hands to Laurent’s face and cups it, controlling the angle totally, lifting it to his. There are words in his mouth, but they can wait. He kisses Laurent deeply, savagely, selfishly, not allowing him to move an inch to either side. Laurent is taken by surprise; he makes a noise into the kiss that is neither artful nor pretty. But after that single moment he is completely pliant, his mouth soft and eager, melting into the kiss. When Damen finally pulls back, Laurent breathes in with enough force to suggest that he had forgotten to do so for a while. He is so beautiful that Damen’s heart skips in something like disbelief.

“I think you would be gentler than you look,” Damen says. “I think I could make you laugh.”

Another kiss, stroking into Laurent’s mouth with his tongue, and another, as though seeking something heady and sweet and strong; as though Damen could drink himself to a state of blurred vision and uneven steps, simply from this.

Then, with a rush of wicked courage: “I think you would take it like you are born to it.”

There is something genuine, barely visible, in the way Laurent’s eyes widen. Then he rallies. He reaches up and takes hold of Damen’s arms–-avoiding the cuff fastidiously–-and pulls them down from his face.

“You have already made two mistakes in this negotiation,” Laurent says.

“Oh?” says Damen.

“You told me how deep your pockets are. And you betrayed how much you want the goods in question.”

Damen inhales. Laurent’s clever hand is on Damen’s cock, tracing the length of it through the fabric, stroking.

Damen leans in to kiss him again but is halted by Laurent’s palm, planted in the centre of his chest. The other hand, still wrapped firmly around Damen, gives a squeeze that tears a groan from Damen’s throat.

“Negotiate, King of Artes,” Laurent says, deadly. “What would you give, to have me?”

Damen stares down at him, wrecked by the feeling that surges up, this dizzying love that leaves his lips parched with need and with honesty.

“A kingdom,” says Damen.


	10. hockey AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Hockey!au in which Damen accidentally injures Auguste during a Stanley Cup final and takes him out of the game for good (concussion or neck injury or otherwise) and Laurent is the small, speedy player who snipes goals and has the foulest mouth on the ice, and who is determined to avenge his big brother and lead his team to victory (and Damen's heart). <3_

Damen’s been watching tape for almost an hour now, and he’s not sure if he’s more depressed on behalf of his own D-men or just flat-out entranced. Of _all_ the rookies to be picked up, and by all the teams. This season is going to be…interesting.

The figure skating background is obvious, but it enhances de Vere rather than holding him back. He’s nimble and flexible, he takes shots from angles that look physically impossible, and he’s one of the fastest skaters Damen’s ever seen. Damen pauses the tape; de Vere is a blur, gliding on one blade through a gap in the defence that nobody else would even consider to be a gap.

“I think I’m in love,” Damen says to the television.

“That would be inconvenient,” says a voice from behind him.

It takes Damen a full ten seconds to realise that the person standing in the doorway of the coaching room is the same person whose footwork he’s just been admiring. Dressed in jeans and a shirt, without the pads and gear, he looks nothing like a hockey player. The unlikelihood of it strikes Damen all over again: Laurent de Vere, who at thirteen was on track to be Canada’s next Olympic hopeful in figure skating. And who, after his brother’s early retirement, turned around and took up hockey, despite being–by anyone’s standards–too old, too small, and too late.

“You–-what are you doing here?” Damen demands.

“Spying on my soon-to-be opposition,” Laurent says. “Obviously.”

When Damen doesn’t respond immediately, Laurent gives an infinitesimal shrug. “My father. Meetings,” as if the question bores him.

Damen has spoken to Auguste, since the accident. They had lunch a few years ago. It was awkward and strange but it helped, a little, with the rock of sadness and regret that Damen has carried around in his chest ever since the bright, loud slam of collision; ever since he hauled himself to his feet on the ice, and Auguste didn’t.

 _These things happen_ , Auguste said. _It’s the game._

He has never spoken to Laurent before today.

“It’s good to meet you,” Damen says, a belated attempt at politeness.

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t return the sentiment,” says Laurent.

Damen’s stomach clenches, painfully. So that’s how it’s going to be.

Laurent looks at his own frozen figure on the screen. “I’ve watched every minute of every game you’ve ever played, Akielos,” he says, bloodless. “I know you. I know you inside out.”

“So this will be a fair fight,” Damen says.

“There’s no such thing.”

Laurent walks across the room to stand in front of Damen. He’s compact, graceful, but he moves with the same steely determination that flew him through his teenage years and all the way to the top ten NHL draft prospects. His cheekbones are harsh and perfect in the artificial light. He could not be more Damen’s type if he’d been designed in a _lab_ , and Damen can’t hide the hitch of breath as Laurent moves into his space.

Laurent catches it; his eyes widen, very slightly. He gives a private kind of smile and then leans even further in, going up on his toes. His fair hair brushes Damen’s cheek. He smells as cold and clean and wonderful as a new-surfaced rink.

 _Fuck._ Damen thinks. _Oh, fuck._

“Je vais te décalisser,” says Laurent de Vere, gentle as a lover, into Damen’s ear. Damen feels concussed by sheer proximity. “And once again, for the ignorance of Americans–”

“You’re going to fucking destroy me,” says Damen. Despite everything, he can feel a smile breaking helplessly out on his face. “I’m looking forward to watching you try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to addend this with my tumblr tags, which I feel are vitally important to the overall work:
> 
> #OH SNAP #of course laurent is quebecois #sacrés everywhere #tutoyering damen like a rude little shit #you can choose their teams for yourself #but it's probably the bruins and the habs #all things considered #LATER IN LIFE THEY ARE BOTH TRADED TO THE KINGS #badumtsssh #no I'm kidding #laurent would never move to california


	11. Damen heals, Laurent fusses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _laurent fussing over damen like he imagined as he heals from the stab wound!_

“Your Highness-–Your Majesty,” Paschal corrects himself. “I can do this more easily if you are not leaning over me.”

Paschal is one of the only people who can get away with ordering Laurent around, even if he keeps Highness-Majestying him. It’s at least better than the awkward kind of pause that keeps intruding when he has to remember how to address Damen. Often Paschal calls him _Captain_ ; a title which sometimes still feels more comfortable to Damen than _Exalted_ , if he’s honest.

Laurent backs up by, perhaps, half a foot. He is staring so intently at the dressing on Damen’s abdomen that Damen is surprised the thing hasn’t flung itself across the room or burst into flame.

Paschal gives one of his nods at the sight of Damen’s wound, a neat row of stitches buried in skin that is already a striving and healthy pink in place of the angry red of a few days ago. Deep breathing hurts, and Damen’s not allowed to move past water and wine and clear broth for another two days, but even he can tell he’s making excellent progress.

“The ooze has stopped,” Paschal says. “Good.” He wipes away a black crust of dried blood, sprinkles on a powder to prevent rot, and then wraps a new dressing in place. Damen watches Laurent, who is standing perfectly still.

When Paschal has packed up and left the room, Laurent comes and sits on the edge of the bed. He regards Damen with his measuring blue eyes. There is emotion in them, shadowed but present.

“You heard him. It’s healing well,” Damen says. And then, to give Laurent something to do: “I think tomorrow I’ll try joining the guard for drills.”

“You will not,” Laurent says.

“Just the opening forms. Nothing strenuous.”

Laurent narrows his eyes. “Damen, I will chain you to this bed.”

Damen knows when Laurent is in deadly earnest, by now. He believes him.

“That could be fun,” Damen says, blandly teasing.

Laurent flushes a little, but the irritated look doesn’t budge. One of his fingers taps the gold cuff on Damen’s wrist in a mannerism that would be pacing the floor and tugging at his hair, if he were anyone else. Damen deals with it by simply taking hold of Laurent’s hand.

“I scared you,” Damen says quietly. “This scared you.”

“Yes. Is that what you want to hear? Yes. You were on the ground. Bleeding. I thought-–”

Laurent looks away. His hand in Damen’s tightens, a spasm. Damen remembers how Laurent’s voice sounded shouting his name in the baths: frantic and unsteady, finally uncontrolled. He doubts Laurent was _thinking_ anything, at the time. Laurent was years away, a young boy, watching the person he loved most be stabbed to death in front of his eyes.

Damen shrugs himself higher on the pillow in order to reach across for the lacings at the front of Laurent’s tunic; he should be able to hook his fingers through them, at least, and pull Laurent closer.

“Stop _moving_ , you idiot barbarian,” Laurent says, batting his hand away with force. But he moves himself instead, leaning over, his free hand sliding behind Damen’s neck, and kisses Damen with a gentleness that turns Damen’s bones to warm water and makes blood pulse painfully in his stomach. It is its own peculiar type of pain, to know that now he has Laurent and Laurent is not going to do anything more _strenuous_ than kiss Damen until he has, probably, a report signed in triplicate giving Paschal’s blessing.

But they have time. They have so much time.

Damen can wait.


	12. Laurent and Auguste the night before Marlas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Can I request a scene with canon!Laurent and Auguste, perhaps the night before the battle. I love what you did with the relationship between Auguste and Laurent in "lines on the palm" but I'm really curious as to how you interpret their relationship back when Laurent was still young enough to be shy and bookish, and worship Auguste with no reservations._

“Auguste.”

Auguste looks up and sees the yellow head, hesitantly inserted through the tent flap. He smiles and sets his sword aside. It’s been cleaned enough, polished enough. He knows he’s just losing himself in the reflective surface, now, trying not to think too hard or too far ahead. This is a better distraction.

“Hello there, Sparrow.”

It’s a dull brown name for such a golden boy. But Laurent hasn’t lost the bright, inquisitive way of peering at things that first earned him the name when he was barely old enough to walk. It’s on his face, along with a brief and subdued version of his usual smile, when Auguste waves him all the way inside.

“I heard Father talking,” Laurent says. “You’re planning to challenge?”

“Yes,” Auguste says. “If the Akielons have any honour, they will accept. It will save a lot of unnecessary bloodshed.”

Laurent takes this in solemnly, as he takes everything in. “Vere has used single combat to settle hostilities three times in history,” he says, unexpectedly. “We were defeated twice of those times. And won once. Two hundred years ago, King Josse defeated the champion of Ver-Vassal at the battle of Mont-Lys.”

“You know everything, don’t you?” Auguste says with affection. “I will need that head of yours, little brother, when I am king. Don’t go knocking it against anything.” Not that he thinks Laurent has the temperament to disguise himself in armour and go looking for the front line of a battle, as he himself would have done at that age. But it’s worth the reminder.

“You can even the score,” Laurent says.

Auguste laughs. “You’re very confident.”

“Nobody can best you,” Laurent says, with a trust that takes Auguste’s heart in its fist and squeezes.

He smiles, a little. “I hope not.”

Laurent comes closer, all the way close, and leans into Auguste. His voice is still a boy’s voice, but he’s growing. His head comes all the way up to Auguste’s chest now.

“I still wish you didn’t have to do it,” he says, muffled.

Auguste hugs him tight, then pulls back, his hands on Laurent’s shoulders. Fondness fills his chest like water. His younger brother is already such a clever, beautiful, caring boy. It’s going to be incredible watching him grow up and into his gifts.

“Laurent, this is part of being a prince, or a king. It’s valuing the good of the kingdom and its people above your own life. It’s being glad to take the risk, and willing to make the sacrifice when required. No matter what happens tomorrow, promise me you’ll remember that.”

“Make the sacrifice when required,” Laurent says, quietly.

“Yes.”

“All right,” Laurent says. “I promise.”


	13. Laurent and Auguste, post-canon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _i have no idea how this would work but i've always wanted to see auguste meeting canon/postcanon laurent_

Damen fell asleep a short while ago, lulled by wine and food and the midday heat. Laurent is awake, leaning back on his hands, which are buried in the thick grass. Off to one side are the marble steps which lead up to the hall of the Kingsmeet; down the hill, resting in the shade of trees, are their guards.

This is a place in their kingdom, like any other place. Laurent will face it unflinching, time and time again, until it stops sending fear and rage like small armies into his throat. Already, with the buzz of insects and the thought of Damen laughing around a mouthful of bread, Damen sleepily kissing the green-smudged tips of Laurent’s fingers, the memory of his uncle’s last triumph seems like less of a threat.

There is a soft and sudden noise, like a branch falling to the ground, and Auguste sits down in the grass at Laurent’s other side.

“Hello, little brother,” he says. “You know you’ll burn, sitting here in the sun.”

He looks exactly as he did on the day he died. Strong, and regal, and calmly confident. About the age that Damen is now.

“How,” Laurent starts. He licks over his dry lips. “What is this?”

Auguste is gazing at the marble statues that line the stairs, weathered by the centuries, but full of life. An ancient lineage of kings, like the one picked out in the oldest and largest tapestry in the palace at Arles.

“History is thinner here, I think,” Auguste says.

Laurent reaches out to touch him, then stops. Either he will be able to feel his brother there, flesh and blood, or his hand will pass through him like mist. Both of them will destroy Laurent, in their own fashion. He pulls his hand back and takes tight hold of his knees instead.

“I’m sorry,” Laurent says. It falls from his mouth as though over a cliff.

Auguste turns and faces him fully. Laurent remembers this smile. It broke over you like sunrise, like stepping out of the winter shade. It was one of Laurent’s favourite things in the world.

“For what?” his brother asks.

Laurent finds he cannot say it. He glances at Damen, whose face is relaxed in repose, his breathing slow and even. Even now the sight of him makes a terrifying and bewildering tenderness start to brim in Laurent, held barely at bay by the boundaries of his skin.

“I could have been the one to kill _him_ , at Marlas,” Auguste says. “Would you have preferred that happiness to the one you have now?”

Laurent feels his shoulders flinch and curl in. When it comes to Auguste he has no defences, none at all; he never needed them.

“Yes,” he says, but he hears the depth of the uncertainty in his voice, like echoes in a cave.

“You can’t torture yourself over what didn’t happen, Sparrow,” Auguste says gently. “Look to what you have. Look to what you’re going to do.”

Laurent, restless, lies back in the grass. He can’t look at Auguste’s face for too long-–it’s painful, like a thorn in his hand–-but he’s afraid to look away. He picks out slow shapes in the clouds, and finds Damen’s arm with his fingertips. The golden cuff is exactly the same temperature as Damen’s skin. Laurent looks back at Auguste, who is limned in light.

“We’re going to build something great,” Laurent says. “I’m going to-–you’ll be proud of me.”

“I am proud of you,” Auguste says.

Laurent has to close his eyes and count his breaths: in, and out. The sun is a warm weight on his eyelids.

“Sleep,” Auguste says. “I’ll watch over you.”

Laurent does.


	14. daemons/His Dark Materials AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _May I ask for a daemons AU of Captive Prince? Original canon or other settings are fine, I'm kind of curious to see what their daemons would be._

Eleonore’s claws dig so tightly into his shoulder that they prick his skin even through the layers and layers of fabric. She doesn’t like it when Laurent drinks. Her vision feels clouded; she feels unsafe, more easily spooked.

Laurent sympathises.

But there is no possible way that he will get through this sober.

“Have you taught him some manners, since last time?” Laurent says.

He is not expecting a reply, and none is given, nor is it needed. The Prince of Akielos is covered in bruising which shows even on his brown skin, and there are deep, raw cuts on either edge of the cuffs around his wrists. He has struggled.

“Look at me,” Laurent orders now.

Damianos does. His eyes are a clear brown, full of pride and hatred. There is blood matted in his hair.

The first time Laurent saw this man’s face, he was thirteen years old and Eleonore was close to settling; on most days she was flipping between either a white hare or a cat. Not long after the deaths of Laurent’s father and brother, she regressed. People murmured that the Prince’s daemon was flighty, that being so abnormally slow to settle spoke of a weakness of character. It took a year for her to narrow her focus again, and that time, it was to birds. And then one day she was a falcon, which she had never been before. She never budged from there. Like Laurent, she knows what it is to set her mind to something and refuse to waver.

“Your orders, Highness,” says one of the men. “What shall we do with him?”

Off to one side is the daemon in the shape of a dog: muzzled, collared, chained. The pain and indignity from that must have been horrific, Laurent thinks idly. Akielons are wretched barbarians, they enslave daemons along with people, but the taboo against touching them is as strong as it is here in Vere. The man holding the chain looks ill at ease.

“Your daemon,” Laurent says, addressing Damianos directly. “Her name?”

The daemon in question is as tall as a man’s waist, with long hunting legs and a coat of brindled dark brown and tan. She growls, long and deep in her throat, but makes no attempt to move.

“Anastasoula,” says Damianos. He is lying. He adds, in Veretian, “Careful, sweetheart. She bites.”

“It was an oversight not to muzzle _you_ ,” Laurent says. “But one I can rectify, if need be.” He makes his voice petulant to match the decadent droop of his eyes. He is skating on ice over the churning lake of his fury. He makes a small gesture, and the man holding the daemon’s chain gives it a short tug.

Damianos winces and casts a desperate, hopeless look at his daemon. She is at Laurent’s mercy, and Laurent is feeling the furthest thing from merciful. His head aches with wine. He would like to take a sword and run this man through, and watch him bleed out onto the floor. He would like to put his foot on that muscled throat and press slowly, painfully down. His brother’s killer is here in front of him, and Laurent is doing nothing. Nothing at all.

Eleonore taps her head against his ear in a soothing way that means, _patience_. Other than that, she is motionless, and silent. Only the silvery thread of her emotions betrays her concern for Laurent, and her rage, which glides beneath his. She is a predator. She knows how to be still, when a trap is being set.

“Let’s try this again,” Laurent says.

Damianos’s rage, when he lifts his eyes to Laurent, is as clear as the ugly bruise that covers most of one cheek. His daemon’s brief whimper of pain has become a growl again. Messy. Obvious.

“ _Your Highness_ ,” Damianos says, in a voice like crushed stone.

“Better,” says Laurent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damen’s daemon (hah) is actually called Lysandra, and she is a [Cretan hound](http://www.oocities.org/minois_kennel/ourdogsa_files/Aris_O.jpg). Anastasoula means _resurrection_ ; Damen is being unwisely melodramatic. Eleonore is, funnily enough, an [Eleonora’s falcon](https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7331/10564281425_837c257da9_b.jpg).


	15. Damen experiencing snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _damen experiencing snow for the first time? bc let's be real akielos is never going to get cold enough for snow, so he and laurent go to arles and its all pretty and frosty and damen is amazed._

Damen wakes up with a cold breeze brushing his upper back and bare arms, and absently tugs a blanket into his lap as he sits up in the bed. One of the shutters on the main window has been flung open, allowing the winter air to flood into the room.

There is a cushioned window seat tucked beneath the window; Laurent is resting one foot on it, near a steaming mug, but has seated himself mostly up on the window frame itself. He’s partway dressed, in shirt and trousers, and has another of the bed’s blankets tucked around his shoulders. The daylight has a strange quality to it, bright and washed-out. It makes Laurent’s skin look like porcelain.

“Good morning,” Laurent says, not looking up from the bundle of papers in his lap. “It snowed overnight. I told you it would.”

There’s a fire going, but the room is still cold enough, when Damen climbs out of bed, that Damen hastily throws on some Veretian clothes of his own.

“Dispatches, already?” he says.

“I saved you the boring ones,” Laurent says.

“Official, or...?”

“Yes.”

Damen rubs his hands together as he walks over to the window. What Makedon insists on referring to as Damen and Laurent’s _cursed restless habits_ means that the business of the kingdom happens, more often than not, on the move. The Kings’ Messengers are a thriving network, spread from Arles to Ios. Many of them are freedmen. They wear the livery of the kingdom and they are well trained, well guarded, and well paid.

They are also just visible enough that the existence of the _un_ official messengers, the ones carrying messages that cannot risk interception, goes largely unnoticed.

“If you–-oh,” Damen says, halting.

They are at a country house, one of the many that belongs to Laurent himself, tucked up in the highlands near the border with Vask. On their approach yesterday the ground was littered with patches of dirty grey ice. _That’s not real snow_ , Laurent said, gazing up at the clouds, which were thickly pale and low. _Just wait._

The view from the window, this morning, is dazzling. Someone has thrown white paint over the bare branches of some trees and the green-black needles of others, and rolled out across the entirety of the grounds a white carpet set with glass, or diamonds. The sky is a dull blue scattered with ragged puffs of those same clouds, lingering like actors eager to hear the reaction to their performance. There is a small, friendly layer of the white substance scattered on the external ledge of the window. It crunches and melts in Damen’s hands when he picks some up; the air bites at his wet fingertips with numbing teeth.

“We should go riding today,” Laurent says. “I can push you into a whole bank of the stuff, if you like.”

When Damen pulls his gaze away from the snow-covered lawns, Laurent is watching him with one of his rare, soft smiles.

“It’s beautiful,” Damen says.

Laurent’s smile deepens. His hair is falling into his eyes and the very tip of his nose is pink. Damen leans over to kiss him and Laurent’s lips are cool, belying the heat of the mouth beneath. He tastes delicious, like fruit and spices.

“Mulled apple juice,” Laurent says, in answer to what must be the question forming on Damen’s face. “There’s a jug by the fire.”

Damen fetches his own mug. When he returns to the window, Laurent has unfastened the other shutter and pushed it wide open, and Damen climbs to seat himself in the corner, mirroring Laurent.

“Here,” Laurent says, handing a bundle of paper across to him. “Nikandros is frothing about something again. You can summarise it for me.”

“Frothing?”

“Angry handwriting,” Laurent says, with a quirk of lips.

Damen unfolds the bundle and laughs. It’s true. “The riding is looking more appealing.”

“Work first,” Laurent says, mock-stern, and stretches his leg out on the window frame so he can nudge at Damen with his socked foot.

Damen lifts Laurent’s foot onto his own knee. He rubs at the sole of it with one thumb and holds Nikandros’s dispatch between his fingers, balancing the mug in his other hand. When he inhales deeply, the crisp air pricks at his nostrils, softened by just a hint of cloves rising from the juice.

He settles down to read.


	16. art university AU: part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _MORE ART SCHOOL AU PLEASE!!! damen's contribution to the end-of-year sculpture department show_

“Well,” says Auguste. “That’s certainly–-something.”

“Isn’t it _amazing_?” gushes a young woman with short hair the colour of lime Skittles, sticking her nose into the conversation as she sweeps past them with a glass of wine. “He’ll take out the prize for _sure_.”

Auguste glances at his brother. “You didn’t tell me it was going to be life sized.”

“It wasn’t,” says Laurent, in a voice that promises death to someone.

“ _Laurent_ ,” says the most likely someone, from behind them.

Laurent turns around.

Auguste, for his part, is having trouble looking away from the sculpture. It has pride of place at the department’s exhibition, set on a plinth in the centre of the largest room. Something clever has been done with the lighting, calling coloured shadows out of the bronze: murky green and blue and a deep, gleaming red, like blood or iron ore. The nude figure’s pose is one of incipient movement, such that one almost expects it to step down into the crowd: half-turning from a simple stance, with a hand raised unselfconsciously to the back of the head. The expression is a wry almost-smile that Auguste has seen before, but not often, and he wonders at the skill it must have taken not only to capture it in the moment but to call it onto Laurent’s face in the first place.

“And this is your brother?”

Auguste judges this a good time to turn around also. He is distracted only for a moment by whatever is happening on the nearest wall, which seems to be a firework of pink paint and half-destroyed teddy bears, along with a huge wreath of roses and origami lilies crafted from delicately beaten metal.

“Yes,” says Laurent.

“Auguste,” says Auguste, directing his best Wall-Street-shark grin and firmest handshake at the tall man smiling down at his brother.

“Damen,” is the reply. Damen has unruly dark hair and an open smile, and rough patches on his hands that could be burns or calluses. Auguste lets his own smile soften into something more natural.

“Congratulations on the show,” Auguste says. “Is that the right sentiment?”

“Thank you.” Damen is wearing a simple red shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and neat slacks, at which Laurent is doing a tolerable job of not staring too openly.

“You made-–it was _small_ ,” Laurent hisses at Damen.

“I made a maquette,” Damen agrees. “This is my final. I wanted it to be striking.”

“It certainly is,” says Auguste.

They are attracting looks. Most of these looks start on Damen’s sculpture, then move to Laurent. Then–-with raised eyebrows–-back to the sculpture.

Laurent’s lips are pressed together. “It’s superb,” he says, sounding very displeased about it. “You’ll probably win the graduation prize.”

Damen watches him with an expression of amusement mixed with, Auguste is entirely unsurprised to see, radiant desire. He puts a friendly hand in the small of Laurent’s back and leans in close, speaking directly into Laurent’s ear. Auguste can’t catch what he says.

Laurent turns the same shade of pink as the Valentine’s wreckage on the wall.

Auguste coughs. “I’m going to go and look at–that pile of broken furniture.”

“That’s Nikandros’s piece,” says Damen.

“Of course it is,” says Laurent, “ _sculptors_ ,” but he’s leaning into Damen’s hand anyway.


	17. Damen and Laurent's first anniversary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Damen and Laurent's first anniversary. And maybe their 20th, too._

“It’s tradition,” Laurent says.

Damen frowns. “I look almost angry.”

The version of Damen in the painting looks like any restless man who has never enjoyed standing for long periods without moving, even if military training has made him proficient at it. Laurent did a lot of quiet talking through motionless lips in order to coax him through the sittings, although the artist’s face gave a pained twitch whenever Laurent made Damen laugh.

The painting is large, dewy, and dramatic. The two of them are dressed in the full splendour of their rank and are standing angled into one another, with their hands resting on a table. Spread out on the table is a map showing the unified kingdom, scattered with various objects representative of their countries and kingships. The artist had a good eye; their cuffs are centred, mirrored, a brighter gold than anything else in the frame. The eye finds them first.

It would be a better painting, Laurent thinks, if they were laughing. But posterity doesn’t reward laughter. This isn’t about them as individuals; it’s about _tradition_ , the time-honoured gift from any Veretian ruler on the first anniversary of their marriage.

The Akielon tradition is jewels. Damen had a new coronet made, of emeralds set in silver, which at the celebration tonight he will lower onto Laurent’s head with enormous ceremony and, Laurent suspects, just enough humour in his eyes to count as apology. He knows that Laurent still prefers simple ornaments, or none at all.

Laurent has seen the coronet. The emeralds are like sunlight off young leaves. To wear it, on occasion, will…not be a hardship.

“My real gift,” Damen says now, “had better involve less in the way of standing still.”

Laurent lowers his tone and lays one hand on Damen’s chest. “I told you: I’ll give it to you tonight. After dark.”

“You _told_ me to wear my oldest pair of boots,” Damen says. “I do not feel seduced. Unless you plan to indulge a fantasy that you haven’t told me about.”

Tonight they are going rooftop-running, down in the old part of the city. Laurent has stolen a knitted cap from Jord, in preparation, and has arranged for them to be chased by their own guard. His blood dances in his veins at the thought. He blinks calmly up at Damen.

“I do despair of my own taste,” he says.

Damen says, “You can have yours now.”

Laurent takes the box that Damen pulls from the document-pouch at his belt. It’s small but beautifully made, cherry-dark wood polished to a high shine. He cracks the hinge of the lid. Nestled on velvet inside are three small objects that Laurent, after turning one in his fingers, identifies as Akielon copper coins, beaten smooth and restamped with a single Veretian fleur de lys.

“After all,” Laurent says, “it’s common knowledge that a fuck with the Prince of Vere can be bought for a few coppers.”

Hilarious memory flares between them for a moment.

“I don’t pay for it,” says Damen, lazy.

Laurent suppresses his own smile. “What are they?”

“These are favours,” Damen says. “Or secrets. Or both.”

Laurent’s fingers go still. He lifts his eyes from the gorgeous grain of the wood. “Explain.”

“Each one of these is something I will do for you. No limits, and no questions asked. You don’t have to tell me why. Ever.”

Laurent’s mind floods with a brief, wondrous cacophony, like a stone thrown into a flock of birds. He can’t speak while it subsides. Damianos of Akielos, whom Laurent has flogged and deceived and broken and finally loved, loved beyond even his own conception of the word, has handed him absolute trust in a wooden box.

“We agreed not to keep secrets,” Laurent says. A question.

“I know. But sometimes we might need to,” Damen says. “I’m–-I’m trying to deal less in absolutes.”

He’s not going to be much good at it; Laurent can predict that right now. Damen wouldn’t be Damen without the firm and shining core of his honour, his belief in what’s good and right. But Damen changed his mind about Laurent, despite all of Laurent’s efforts to keep himself obscured. Sometimes there is value in letting yourself loosen.

Laurent closes the box. His eyes are hot. He looks back at the painting.

“It’s for the best we had it done now,” he says. “In twenty years, when my looks are gone, at least you’ll have this.”

His voice does something strange on the last word. He barely has enough time to be annoyed at himself before Damen is laughing, dragging Laurent close and kissing him, his hands in Laurent’s hair. Laurent holds the box of secrets tightly, and his eyes fall closed. He feels, as he always feels, like a weapon in Damen’s grasp: hungry and expertly handled.

“What?” Laurent says when he’s been released, feeling the smile chase his lips again.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you talk beyond next year’s harvest tax.”

Laurent knows himself well enough to recognise the truth there. His skill for planning was always poured into keeping himself alive until his coming-of-age, and to beating his uncle; any future beyond that was a blurred uncertainty. He’s still learning how to plan for happiness. For growth.

“I pledged you my kingdom and my heart, a year ago,” Laurent says.

“Yes,” Damen says.

If Laurent concentrates he can already feel the night air on his face, in anticipation of the game to come. He is back in Nesson-Eloy; he is suspended, wild; for a wonderful moment he is free of anything but the flight from one balcony to another and Damen’s strong hands stopping his fall.

Sometimes, you just take the leap.

Laurent says, soft, “I pledge you the length of my life.”


	18. sleeves on Akielons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _charls and the merchant gang (re)meeting royalty. cough, 'sleeves' on akielons XD_

“Ah, Damianos,” Laurent says, when Damen enters. “Come here.”

Damen has left a meeting with the palace steward in response to a message bearing Laurent’s seal, and at first he is not entirely certain what Laurent has summoned him into. The group of men seated around the table are better-dressed than half the court. It’s only when one of them makes a choked sound-–quickly dissolved in a cough-–that Damen recognises him as Mathelin, the silk merchant. That must make the others his colleagues from the inn, who spent an evening in lively conversation with Laurent, discussing trade routes and taxes and the market for Akielon cotton.

“Charls,” Damen says, in greeting.

“Majesty.” Charls, standing next to Laurent, has the faintly smug expression of one who has attended this piece of theatre already and knows all the plot twists.

“Y-Your Majesty,” most of the merchants manage to stammer.

“How can I help?” Damen says.

“I would like your opinion. We are negotiating,” Laurent says, with a half-smile. “Our esteemed merchant friends drive a hard bargain.”

Damen recognises this as a flagrant lie. Laurent will have kicked one leg out from under these men simply by revealing himself to be King Laurent rather than Charls, cousin of Charls; the second blow of Damen’s identity will be enough to topple them entirely, and Damen has no doubt that this summoning was precisely timed. Few people can match Laurent even fully warned and with all their wits about them. For a group of men thrown so off balance, this will be like plucking apples from a tree.

Damen tries for a look of neutral interest as he allows Charls to explain the sketches and samples spread out on the table.

“Sleeves,” Damen says, resigned.

They aren’t, really. They are a decorative loop of material, designed to be caught up in the clasp of a chiton and lie against the upper arm, providing contrast. The samples are of ornate Veretian cloth, like a light brocade. The effect with be a melding of Veretian and Akielon styles: pretty, pointless, and symbolic.

“Nobody sets a trend like a beloved ruler,” Charls says, with a small bow in Damen’s direction.

Damen looks at Laurent, whose eyes are brimming with subtle mischief.

“I see,” Damen says.

“I am willing to accept a discount of five percent on luxury fabrics and thirty percent for military outfitting,” says Laurent. “In exchange, the military contract will be held exclusive for five years, and King Damianos will wear these for one season.”

“Three seasons,” says Charls at once.

Laurent says nothing. That same implacable half-smile is somehow more pronounced. The merchants are quiet in the face of it. _I am still your king_ , says this pause; _whatever you do here, you do at my pleasure._

“Two,” Laurent says, once the point has been driven home, “and you stop driving down the price of raw wool in Barbin by buying from Patran smugglers.”

This time, the quiet of the merchants is the vaguely panicked quiet of deer who have just heard the baying of hounds.

“Your Majesty-–” Mathelin starts, in an injured tone.

“I wouldn’t bother,” Damen remarks.

The merchants subside into an uneasy huddle. No further attempts at denial are forthcoming.

Charls glances at his fellows, then back at Laurent. “Agreed,” he says, with another diplomatic bow. “Two seasons.”

“If you and the tailors can’t create a sustained market between yourselves in that time, you don’t deserve the business,” Laurent says coolly.

The cloth merchants eventually exit with a collective expression that’s familiar to Damen by now. Anyone who has ever negotiated with Laurent tends to look like that, as though they’re still not sure whether they’ve just won a victory or been shaken down in a dark alley.

“ _Laurent_ ,” Damen says, when they’re alone.

“As you keep pointing out, _dear_ ,” Laurent says, “I can’t exactly wear more garments than I already do. It has to be you.”

“Thirty percent from the military contract,” Damen says, thoughtful. “That will make a difference. Sailcloth as well? Tent canvas?”

Laurent nods. “Have you ever been shouted at by a quartermaster? I do not recommend it.”

“And the price of Barbine wool,” Damen says. He watches Laurent’s face, the almost imperceptible clearing of Laurent’s brow. “That’s what you really wanted.”

Laurent is weighing down the corners of a map. “Apparently even our sheep farmers have to eat.”

“That’s what you promised Lord Franck,” Damen realises. “In exchange for his vote on the wage laws.”

“Yes,” Laurent says, but absently, like he’s already moved on. “We should go to Acquitart.”

It takes a moment for Damen to catch up; he’s stuck marvelling at Laurent’s nerve in extracting a key vote based on a promise so vague and outrageous as raising the price of wool. “The border guard.”

“You can put some of that famous military prowess to good use and terrorise the garrison,” Laurent says. “Either they’re incompetent, or someone’s taking a cut to turn a blind eye to goods trickling in from Patras. Care to wager which?”

“I’ll find out. Give me three weeks.”

“You only need one,” Laurent says, with a warming amount of confidence.

“It might be complicated.”

“ _Two_ ,” Laurent says, “and–-” and abruptly realises he’s being teased. He closes his mouth. A smile twitches at the edge of it.

Damen grins and settles into a chair. It’s been a long while since he did anything so hands-on; the idea of drilling a company of men to perfection is appealing, after months spent in nothing more strenuous than negotiations. Knowing Laurent, they will probably end up sneaking away from the fort and spying on smugglers in the dead of night.

Wearing sleeves is a small price to pay.

Damen says, “You did warn Torveig that raising the export duty would encourage smugglers.”

“Yes,” Laurent says. “And now I’m cleaning up his mess.”

“For which he owes you…?”

Laurent’s fingers dance across the map. His eyes are alight. “I don’t know yet,” says the King of Artes. “But I’ll think of something.”


	19. Auguste and Nikandros commiserate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _alive!Auguste AU where Auguste and Nikandros commiserate over Laurent and Damen (and their shenanigans) b/c there is never enough of either Auguste or Nikandros._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This particular ficlet takes place in the [Lines on Palms](http://archiveofourown.org/series/395623) universe.

“Prince Laurent of Vere and Akielos,” says the tournament herald, “challenges His Exalted Majesty Damianos, King of Akielos.”

Auguste’s brother, looking cool and slender as ever, strides into the ring as though unaware of the commotion running through the crowd at this announcement. He bows to Auguste, heels together, one hand on his sword hilt, perfectly correct.

“A bold challenge,” Auguste says.

“The privilege of rank,” replies Laurent, with something that might look like humility if you didn’t know him well.

They are at Marlas. It was the obvious place for this, the first formal meeting of councils since Laurent crossed the border as equal parts envoy and prize. An alliance, even one strengthened by marriage, is like a tree. It must be tended, watched, its branches guided along the proper frames, else it withers or grows wild. Friendly sports such as this tournament are a vital part of that. A small amount of blood, spilled in the ring, as an offering against anything larger.

Laurent looks well, Auguste thinks. More confident. Hiding less of his sharpness, his brightness. The afternoon sun strikes gold notes from his hair with such eager force that it should be audible: a hammer on a bell.

Auguste looks sideways at where Damianos is already standing, smiling, unpinning his cloak of office.

“I’m going to need something to fight with,” Damianos says.

The tall kyros, Nikandros, shoots a look at his king that bespeaks an almost familial exasperation. He signals a member of the guard. The king’s sword is fetched hurriedly, along with the pieces of Akielon armour that are worn during such bouts, and Nikandros is the one to help Damianos into them.

“Did you plan this, between you?” Nikandros demands.

“No,” says Damianos. “I think Laurent is putting on a show.”

“How refreshing,” says Nikandros flatly. Damianos laughs at him, and strides down into the ring.

Laurent handles his sword comfortably, at least. Auguste sits forward in his chair. He has no illusions that Laurent will be any kind of match for Damianos. Still, he is looking forward to seeing what Damianos and his Akielon swordmasters have managed to make of Auguste’s scholar of a brother in the past months.

“En garde,” comes the call, and, “ _fight_.”

Within two minutes, it is obvious that this is not that kind of show.

This is a meeting of experts.

Laurent’s style is not Akielon at all. It is the elegant, measured style of the old Veretian masters, and he moves with a surety that could only come from years, years of gruelling practice. Damianos has both strength and superb skill on his side, but Laurent has speed and grace and sheer quicksilver flair on his. He and Damianos fight as two people do who face one another regularly: with blows parried before they are half-completed, each clearly aware of the other’s tricks, often falling into an unconscious rhythm, and greeting with equal delight any advantage gained by either the self or the opponent.

Auguste watches, as enthralled as anyone else in the crowd.

“How long,” he asks Nikandros presently, in the Akielon tongue, “do we expect this to go on?”

“I couldn’t say, Your Majesty,” says Nikandros.

“Come, man,” says Auguste. “You can hazard a closer guess than I could.”

“The problem is, it depends on the day,” Nikandros says. “The shortest bout I’ve seen, Damianos disarmed him almost before you could blink. The longest was near two hours.”

Auguste actually tears his eyes away from the fight, at that.

“Two _hours_?”

Nikandros, watching the clash and pattern of swords, gives a resigned nod. “Damianos was proving a point, and the Prince refused to be proved upon, even when anyone could see he was about to collapse from fatigue. He’s as stubborn as a mule, that boy. Er,” he says, clearly remembering himself. “I mean to say, Your Majesty-–”

“No,” Auguste says, smiling. “That is a fair assessment.”

Thankfully, it does not stretch on for two hours. It is not long at all before Damianos completes an intricate sequence of footwork, bringing himself up within Laurent’s guard, and twists his whole arm in a circle. There is a sound like an anvil being struck. Laurent’s sword flies sideways and Laurent himself is forced tripping backwards, then down.

Applause rises. Laurent, sprawled on his back in the dust, lets out a short and brilliant laugh. Auguste’s chest constricts painfully at the sound, then releases with a soft, hot feeling. Laurent is taking Damianos’s outstretched hand, leaping lightly to his feet, allowing himself to be led over to where Auguste is sitting under the bright silk of the canopy.

Auguste congratulates the victor first, clasping Damianos’s arm and expressing sincere admiration for the man’s skill with a sword.

“Perhaps I will challenge you myself, tomorrow.”

“I would be honoured,” says the King of Akielos.

Auguste then beckons to Laurent, who steps close, brilliant and dusty, under the eyes of two nations. Today Laurent is hiding even less of himself than Auguste had known, and somehow all it does is make Auguste aware of the depths of secrets that must still be there, shadows called into sharp relief by the sun.

“I did wonder who you intended as audience for this particular show,” Auguste murmurs, while kissing his brother on both cheeks. “You could have told me, Laurent.”

Laurent is smiling. His blue gaze is unruffled, though still lit with a glint of exertion. He says, “No. I couldn’t have.”

Auguste hears the unsaid words: not while it was useful to Laurent to be the spare, harmless prince. Not while it was necessary to Auguste’s safety. Sometimes Auguste does not know how anyone can breathe, under the blazing and inexorable weight of Laurent’s love.

“Well fought, little brother,” says Auguste.

Laurent steps back and looks a challenge at Damianos, who smiles and takes Laurent’s hand and kisses the knuckles, holding his gaze. Laurent’s face falters into an expression of pleasure that makes him look younger. The full force of Laurent’s attention, like a charging army, is on Damianos, who absorbs it with nothing more than a deepening of his smile. Damianos has learned not only how to breathe, but how to flourish. How to blaze alongside him. It looks exhausting. They look happier than any two people Auguste has seen.

“If you were wondering,” says Nikandros, breaking across Auguste’s thoughts, “yes. They are _always like that_.”

“My commiserations,” says Auguste.


	20. bakery AU sequel with Miss Fisher crossover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Oh man, any chance of a Miss Fisher/Captive Prince crossover? I just want to see Laurent and Phryne have a conversation (bonus points for Jack and Damen but like, regardless). Either universe or a new one entirely._

Most of the other shops on the street were closed, at that hour of the morning, but the bakery across the road had a sign propped on the footpath proclaiming COFFEE in bright chalk letters, and there was at least one customer seated inside. Phryne left Jack overseeing the evidence-bagging process, adjusted the cowl neck of her dress, and went to do a little informal digging.

There was an immediate smell of bread and coffee, butter and cinnamon, when she pushed open the bakery door. A young couple passed her on their way out, coffee cups in hand, and the man behind the counter had his back momentarily to Phryne as he leaned around a rack of tartlets and answered a muffled query from the back of the kitchen.

“Sorry about that,” he said, turning back. “What can I get you?”

Phryne looked from the young man’s smile to the breadth of his chest, the tempting bulge of his biceps beneath the white T-shirt, and instantly regretted the argument she’d had with Jack last week, which had culminated in her grudging promise to stop picking up one night stands at crime scenes.

(“For the love of God, Phryne,” Jack had said, “why can’t you stick to Tinker like normal people?”

“I, ah, think you mean Tinder, sir,” said Collins.)

“Good morning,” Phryne said now, switching on one of her more harmless smiles. With a bit of a pout thrown in the mix as well; what, it didn’t hurt to _try_. “I’m undecided, actually. What do you recommend?”

“Everything’s good,” said the man. “Trust me.” His own smile widened.

“Everything does look…impressive.” Phryne pulled her eyes admiringly as far down his body as the counter would allow, and then back up. “I’ll have a flat white and one of those almond croissants, then.”

“Have here? Take away?”

“Oh, here.” Phryne flapped a hand towards the handful of tiny tables near the window. She waited for him to ring it up, waved her card in front of the machine, then leaned one elbow against the counter as the man transferred a croissant onto a plate. “Such a fuss going on across the road, isn’t there? With the fire overnight? What do you think happened?”

“Why don’t you tell us?”

The voice came from the front of the shop. Phryne turned. The only seated customer had looked up from the papers spread over the table and the cup at his elbow, and was gazing in her direction. He was even younger. The glasses gave him a fussy, studious look, and he also had a neat head of blond hair and the kind of cheekbones that most girls Phryne knew would have murdered for.

“I thought the point of plain clothes detectives was to look _plain_.” He looked Phryne up and down in much the same way that she had inspected the man behind the counter. Though there was a total and-–Phryne flattered herself–-unusual lack of personal interest in the way he did it. “Or at least, not to spend ten minutes talking to the officer in charge of the scene and taking notes while in full view of the street.”

Phryne smiled and raised her hands. “Caught me,” she said brightly. “But I’m not police. I’m a PI. A friend of the Lees. They asked me to look into things, on top of the police investigation.”

“I don’t blame them,” said the bakery worker, now busy behind the coffee machine. “Three unsolved arsons in the last six months, in this street. No wonder their faith in the police is flagging.”

Phryne took her croissant and pulled out a seat at a free table. “What about the owner of this place? Are they worried they might be next?”

“I don’t know,” said the blond man, widening his beautiful eyes in a manoeuvre that gave Phryne a stab of fellow-feeling. “Are they?”

“Laurent, stop teasing.”

Phryne looked over her shoulder in time to catch the look of exasperation on the baker’s face.

“This is Damen’s bakery,” said Laurent.

“Yes,” said Damen, coming over with Phryne’s coffee. He also switched out Laurent’s empty cup for a new one. Phryne couldn’t help but notice that his saucer had two delicate, curling biscuits balanced on the edge.

“Pistachio tuiles,” Laurent said, picking one up. “You remembered.”

Damen the baker was giving him the kind of pleased, glowing smile that made Phryne sigh inwardly; she clearly wasn’t getting her hands on those biceps.

“That’s the last coffee you get before class,” was all Damen said.

“I do have other options,” said Laurent. He took a small bite from the tuile and shot Damen a frankly scorching glance.

“You’re cheating on me with 7-11 again,” Damen said. “I knew it.”

Phryne was going to have to start questioning them again sooner or later, but she was never so impolite as to interrupt good theatre. And besides: the crisp golden edges peeking through the icing sugar on the croissant weren’t going to eat _themselves_ , were they?


	21. Torveld and Laurent, post-canon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Something involving Torveld of Patras, especially if he tries to flirt with Laurent again._

“I owe him a conversation,” Damen says, quiet into Laurent’s ear. He kisses Laurent’s temple as he pulls away, plucking a bottle of wine from the table, and leaves the dining room. The slave Erasmus, with his head of lovely honey curls and his wide-eyed adoration, follows Damen as though tethered to him.

Prince Torveld of Patras sends Laurent an apologetic smile that is mostly genuine. “I would beg your forgiveness, for dragging him along,” says Torveld, “but this is a promise that I made long ago.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Laurent says, pristinely polite. “Damianos will not mind if we start without him.”

They are in one of the private dining rooms, a gesture of respect to the Patran envoy, who has arrived a full five days before the ceremony. Torveig is awaiting the birth of his first grandchild and is notoriously unwilling to travel; his brother is here in his place. Laurent is not sorry for it.

Torveld lifts his glass in a silent toast, and drinks deeply before setting it down.

“Your Majesty the King,” he says. “So much has happened since we last spoke, I feel I am meeting you entirely anew.”

“Not entirely,” Laurent says.

There is a sharpness to Torveld’s eyes, as he sets his glass down, that raises part of Laurent’s guard.

“The charming young man I met in Arles,” says Torveld. “Was he a fiction?”

“No,” Laurent says. “He was…a facet.”

“A carefully chosen one, I think.”

Laurent looks at him, but Torveld is smiling. After a moment, Laurent smiles back.

“I would not have suited you, my Lord Torveld,” he says lightly.

“Nor I you,” says Torveld, “I suspect.” He inclines his head to the door through which Damen and Erasmus left.

Laurent lets his mouth quirk.

“May I ask you,” says Torveld. “Did you know who he was?”

He means: _From the beginning?_

“I did,” says Laurent.

Torveld is silent. He does not praise Laurent for caring about two dozen Akielon slaves when he had every reason to hate Akielons. He does not mention anything about Laurent knowingly spreading his legs for his brother’s killer. He takes another long sip of his wine, and looks thoughtful.

“Politically,” Torveld says finally, as though picking up the thread of an entirely different conversation, “I cannot see the advantage of your soon-to-be new Empire. Alliances are made every day without going so far as to redraw the lines of nations.”

“The lines of nations,” Laurent counters, “have been redrawn for much more trifling reasons than alliance.”

Torveld says, “I wish you would tell me why.”

Laurent could argue the political advantages, of which there are several. But not quite enough, perhaps, to justify the vast administrative inconvenience of unification. This is a sum that Laurent has been doing in his head for weeks. He always arrives at a different answer.

Torveld’s eyes are kind, for all their sharpness. This is a risk, but a small one. The way Laurent and Damen feel about one another is not much of a secret, if it is one at all; and if it is a blade that can be held over their necks, at least no man shall have the advantage when it comes to wielding it. Laurent takes a slow breath and braces himself for honesty.

“Because he would have married me even if it meant losing a throne instead of gaining one,” Laurent says. “And I am beginning to learn that I might have done the same.”

There is a moment like a long exhale. Like something stale and flammable leaving the room.

“Thank you,” says Torveld. “Trust does not come easily to you, I think.”

“Really,” says Laurent. “However could you tell.”

The lines of laughter beside Torveld’s eyes crease warmly in response to Laurent’s dry tone.

“You have no need of further admirers. Nor are you currently lacking in allies. But I wonder, Laurent of Vere,” says Torveld of Patras, “if you would have me as a friend.”

Laurent’s heart speeds up at the unfamiliar vulnerability of this straightforward offer. He will dissect it later, examine it for hidden motives, but his instinct already tells him he will not find many. He might have requested this, he thinks, if he had any experience with such requests. Torveld has made it easy for him, and Laurent is suddenly, blindingly grateful.

He extends a hand across the table. Torveld takes it.

“Gladly,” says Laurent.


	22. Damen and Erasmus, post-canon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _i was wondering if u could write about what could have happened if damen (or laurent) found out kallias story (and erasmus by association)_

Damen was right to bring the wine along. Slaves do not drink much, and what they do drink will usually be watered down; Erasmus has a soft head for it. After only half a cup of wine he is more relaxed and less prone to stumbling over his own words, though Damen can’t prevent him from sitting at Damen’s feet with his legs tucked comfortably to the side. Damen lets it go. The prospect of sharing a drink in private with the King of Akielos-–for the mundane purpose of conversation, with no service of any kind required–-is pushing someone like Erasmus quite far enough.

There are noticeable differences, though, and Damen is glad of them. The standards of submission are less strict in Patras. Erasmus speaks of himself in the first person, and meets Damen’s eyes with only brief hesitation.

Damen does not keep the same inner tally as Laurent, whose moral code is both rigorous and organised. But he looks at the healthy glow of Erasmus’s cheeks, the confident angle of his shoulders, and thinks: I still owe Torveld something for this. 

“Torveld told you who I was,” Damen says. That much at least was obvious at the start of the night, from the expression on Erasmus’s face when he followed Torveld into the dining room. No shock, no exclamations. Just a flushed determination, and the ingrained turning of his body towards authority.

Erasmus nods. “My master knows I fare better if I am-–prepared. He said I should think of what I wished to say to you, so that it would be easier.”

Damen remembers Erasmus breathing hard and trembling in front of the flames. With only a little effort, he smiles. “That was thoughtful of him.”

“This slave–-” Erasmus breaks off. Closes his eyes. “Exalted, I would like to tell you a story, if you will permit it.”

“Of course,” Damen says.

And Erasmus tells him a story, in his soft and pleasing voice.

By the end of it Damen’s heart is aching for these men, these _boys_ , for whom any physical contact was a danger because their worth lay in being unmarked. Unkissed. Untouched. And all for the pleasure of someone like Damen, who had never given the training of slaves a second thought until the cuffs closed on own wrists; who had met Erasmus in Vere and, even then, noted his training with approval.

Damen carries more scars on his back than half an army, and Laurent is worth a thousand of the man who scarred his soul. _Untouched_. It’s laughable.

Damen rests a hand on Erasmus’s shoulder. He says, “I am sorry,” as gently as he can.

He knows it to be vastly inadequate.

Erasmus ducks his head, clearly fighting the instinct to prostrate himself from gratitude. But his gaze is steady when he looks back up at Damen. He says, “I didn’t understand what Kallias had done for me. It took me a long time, to realise. Now I think it was the bravest thing I have ever seen.” His voice catches. “He didn’t know if I would _ever_ understand. He did that knowing that I might–-despise him. Knowing that it would colour all of my memories of how good he had been to me. To _do_ that, to let someone hate you, in order to save their life.” Erasmus swallows. “I think there should be ballads about that.”

Damen thinks of Jokaste. He thinks of Laurent, sardonic and cruel at Fortaine. Laurent white-faced in the Kingsmeet.

“I think you are right,” he says.


	23. jealous Laurent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Damen and Nik being all bro/flirty with each other constantly, and Laurent unsure if that is just how they are together, or if Nik is actually making a move on his man._

“Tell me again,” Damen says against Laurent’s ear, “about how I am going to leave you for Nikandros?”

“That is not,” says Laurent, “what I said.”

Damen tightens his hand and tugs. Laurent makes a noise straight from the practice ring, the bitten-back groan of sudden exertion.

Laurent is sprawled between Damen’s legs, half-sitting with his back to Damen’s chest and his head thrown back against Damen’s shoulder. His hair is darkened with sweat, lying against his face and neck in ribbons. One of Damen’s arms is across his chest, holding him in place. The hand of the other is wrapped around Laurent’s cock; when Damen looks down their bodies, vaguely dizzy, all he can think is that his fingers look both huge and very brown against Laurent’s skin in the light of the oil lamp.

This will be the third round of pleasure that Damen has dragged from Laurent’s body tonight. The deep and uneven flush of Laurent’s skin from cheeks to knees, laid out like a picture under Damen’s admiring gaze, makes Damen feel off balance and rash. He wants to do things like rub his rough evening chin against the tenderness of Laurent’s inner thighs, or drag his blunt nails across Laurent’s shoulders: not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to mark it.

“What did you say, then?” Damen murmurs.

Laurent after two rounds has lost almost all of his tension. It has been wrung from him like water from a rag. One of his arms passes in front of Damen’s neck then reaches up and back, his fingers buried in Damen’s hair. Laurent’s other palm is flat against the bedclothes. Its tendons stand out like newly raised earthworks, betraying the effort it is taking him to keep it that way as Laurent struggles visibly to find the thrashing end of the conversational rope.

“He knew you in childhood,” Laurent says thinly. “He-– _ah_ ,” as Damen makes deliberate circles with his thumb at Laurent’s tip, spreading the fluid there. “Nobody knows you better.”

“He knew the man I _was_. Naive. Quick to judge.” Damen crooks his neck to kiss somewhere on Laurent’s face, low on his cheek. Wherever he can reach.

Sometimes he thinks he could open his mouth and take Laurent wholly into it, body and soul, rip him lovingly to shreds. There is so much tenderness in Damen, but so much violent need as well, waiting to stretch its legs in these deep furtive hours of the night.

Damen says, “I’m someone else now. And that man is entirely yours.”

A shudder, and Laurent’s fingers tighten in Damen’s hair. Damen relents and finds a true rhythm, pulling firmly on the upstroke, letting his grasp loosen and fingertips tease on the way back down. Laurent’s hand on the sheet claws into a white and rigid arch, then flattens again. His hips move, restless, trying to rise, pushing back against where Damen himself would probably be stirring again if he hadn’t so recently spilled all over Laurent’s lips and chin and the elegant line of his neck.

“Say that again,” Laurent says. His voice is sand on hot metal.

“Yours.”

Laurent swears, low and wild, and then gives a sweet sobbing breath as Damen works him firmly.

“Nobody else’s,” Damen says, unrelenting. “You have ruined me. I don’t want anyone else. I am _yours_.”

Laurent says, “ _Damen_ ,” furious, like a curse.

Damen drags his teeth across Laurent’s neck. The iron muscles of Laurent’s stomach, under that patchy pink, ripple and convulse. He comes apart like a glass vase, spiderwebbed with spreading cracks but still holding its shape.

Damen gathers all the strength of his arms and holds him down, whispering hot nonsense, milking him through it. Laurent’s heart slams against Damen through Laurent’s own ribs and spine. It is fearsome and intoxicating. It is almost beyond the reach of words, feeling Laurent trapped and willingly shattered against him like this.

Once Laurent has subsided into a battle with his own breathing, Damen wipes his hand on the sheet and huffs an almost-laugh into Laurent’s hair.

“Laurent. You can’t honestly think-–”

“No,” Laurent says. He is almost boneless now. He sags against Damen, a damp warm weight, letting himself be held. Satisfaction spreads across his face like dye through cloth. “But it was worth the pretence, don’t you think?”


	24. Harry Potter AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Laurent/Damen Lord of the Rings AU or Harry Potter AU_

The purple bottle on the shelf had said _For Concentration_ , but Damen was wondering if it had been mislabelled. It made vast, sweet-smelling mounds of bubbles that spread from one side of the deep bath to the other, and Damen’s body relaxed dreamily as he sat there, water to the level of his chest, thinking. He was supposed to be running prefect rosters in his head, or planning the Charms essay he had due at the end of the week. Mostly, however, his thoughts were drifting like the steam that fogged the bathroom mirrors, reliving yesterday’s match against Slytherin: the way Jokaste had hovered grinning, blonde ponytail bright in the sun, Quaffle in hand, with a clear shot to the hoops. Damen had smiled back at her, leaving his guard open on the right to distract her from the fact that Pallas was only a few seconds away from the Snitch.

Under most circumstances Damen would have enjoyed Jokaste’s incessant flirting, but living in the same castle for almost seven years meant he’d seen the fiery mess she’d made of her last two breakups. Jokaste was fun–-if exasperating–-to work with, and Damen took his responsibilities too seriously to risk not being able to get through a civil conversation with his Head Girl if they started seeing one another and it ended badly.

Damen’s eyes were closed. They flew open at the sound of a deliberately cleared throat, and he saw Laurent de Vere standing at the edge of the bath.

Damen had a brief flare of alarm-–he wasn’t exactly _decent_ –-but the bubbles covered anything that needed to be covered. And Laurent’s eyes, after an initial disinterested wander, didn’t budge from Damen’s face. Despite the late hour and the humid warmth of the bathroom, Laurent’s robes were pristine. The blue knot of his tie, nestled neatly at his throat, made his eyes look like stained glass.

“How did you–-”

Laurent gave a tiny shrug.

“I suppose I’m going to have to change the prefect’s bathroom password,” Damen said.

“You could,” Laurent said. “But you might be better off getting Dumbledore’s portrait to come and have a chat with the statue of Edith the Enlightened about her habit of giving away passwords to anyone with a sweet, romantic story about wanting some alone time with their boyfriend.”

Damen looked Laurent-–poised, overdressed, looking thoroughly bored with the prospect–-up and down. Laurent gave a sarcastic little wave.

“Surprise, darling.”

When Auguste left Hogwarts, he asked Damen to watch out for his little brother, who would be starting the following year. Laurent, for all that he looked small and delicate peering out from under the Sorting Hat’s brim, had a shy kind of self-possession, and he’d brushed off all of Damen’s offers of advice. But Damen still kept an eye on him, for Auguste’s sake. He knew that Laurent was comfortably at the top of every one of his classes, and that he never missed a Quidditch game despite the fact that Damen had never seen him touch a broom. Laurent’s sharp tongue had stopped him from making many close friends in his first two years, but this year he’d acquired an inexplicable gaggle of first-year Slytherins, led by Nicaise, from whom Damen had already deducted over a hundred points for hexing his classmates. Damen hoped, though not with much optimism, that Laurent might be a good influence on them.

“What are you doing here?” Damen asked.

Laurent settled himself on the bench running around the bathroom wall. He pulled out his wand and cast a muttered enlargement charm on something which turned out to be a pile of parchment covered in dense writing.

“You’re applying for Auror training,” Laurent said. It wasn’t a question.

Damen blinked. “Are you here to give me interview tips?”

Laurent’s mouth pinched at the side, flickered, then broke into a small smile.

“No,” he said. “You’ll be fine. Gryffindor Quidditch Captain in fifth and sixth year, then passed the broom to Kyros when you were named Head Boy. Decent marks in Charms, Transfiguration and Defence, not totally hopeless at Potions. The teachers will fight to give you glowing references. And people like you,” he added, seemingly absorbed in his parchment. “Apparently it’s hard not to.”

Damen felt himself smile, weirdly pleased. “Do _you_ like me?”

“I will like you,” said Laurent, “when you are Head of the Auror Division.”

Damen coughed. A small mound of bubbles was blown from the pile in front of him, and floated a short distance. “What?”

“I know Gryffindors,” Laurent said. “You’ll be the best, bravest, most honourable Auror they have. And you won’t give a moment’s thought to cultivating the right people, saying or doing the right things, in order to be promoted. I’m going to have to guide you through it.”

The words _best, bravest, honourable_ settled into the lining of Damen’s stomach. He let them sit there a moment.

“If it’s so important, why don’t you do it yourself?”

Laurent looked up. There was something glittering and impatient in his eyes that reminded Damen, for a strange and breath-stopping moment, of Jokaste.

“Don’t be stupid, Akielos. I’m going to be Minister for Magic.”

Damen stared at him, this fourteen-year-old Ravenclaw boy with his lovely face and his cool, assured voice. Somewhat to his surprise, he believed him absolutely.

“And you’re starting your campaign already?”

“It takes a while to build up a power base.” Laurent gestured with his parchment. “I have researched this.”

“Of course you have.”

“If I’m to make any decent policy reforms and not be undermined when I’m in office, I’m going to need a Head of the Auror Division that I can trust.”

Damen moved his hands through the water. His fingertips were starting to wrinkle.

“You _do_ like me,” he said.

“I think you could be–-useful.”

“You’re blushing.”

“It’s the steam,” Laurent snapped.

“Alright.” Damen grinned at him. “Tell me your plan.”


	25. Laurent visiting Jokaste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _How about Laurent visiting Jokaste to figure out where she fits in the new empire, in exile or to help with some struggling factions in Akeilos who aren't happy about the union._

“How long has he been walking?”

“Barely a week.” Jokaste watched her son reach, with sticky and interested fingers, for the engraved sheath of Lazar’s sword. “Lykos, leave the man alone.”

Lazar turned the tiny boy around and sent him back towards the couch with surprisingly capable hands. Laurent remembered that his sister had young children.

“Lykos,” Laurent said.

The dark eyes turned towards him. The boy’s hair was long, showing a slight tendency to curl. Lykos sucked on the side of his chubby hand with unworried solemnity, wavering a little on his feet, and returned Laurent’s gaze.

“I was actually addressing your mother,” Laurent said to the boy.

“My father’s name,” said Jokaste, coolly.

“I think,” said Laurent, “I like you better for that.”

Jokaste made a pretty, mocking bow. “I’m afraid, your _Majesty_ , that I wasn’t thinking of your opinion when I chose it.”

She might have been thinking of Damen’s, though; thinking, perhaps, of the unfamiliar Damen who had cold-bloodedly threatened her women, who had learned to play a little of the game since he had left her side, and who would have as little patience as Laurent with any tendency to use the child as an emotional pawn.

She might have recited these reasons to herself, at night. But Laurent saw the way her arms lingered on the boy’s shoulders, the mingled pride and exasperation as she watched his determined toddle across the floor.

Jokaste was one of those who would always make a small kingdom of the space available. Laurent recognised the urge, and the reasoning behind it. Walking through the house he had noted the newer furnishings, the fresh flowers, the few impositions of her control on this place that had been allotted to her. During that walk he had not heard the sound of the child’s voice, and the house was not so large that it would be easy to muffle, given the Akielon propensity for marble and open spaces. She had saved the sight of the boy to throw Laurent off balance; to force business to be conducted in his presence. Laurent hadn’t minded. It was what he would have done in her place.

“As enjoyable as these pleasantries have been,” Laurent said, “I will have your answer now.”

“I will need time to consider-–”

“No,” said Laurent.

Jokaste clasped her hands. She looked down at them, as though she was annoyed at the slip, and then gave a faint shrug; _do with that as you will_ , the gesture said.

“Why would you trust me with this?” she asked. “Why come all the way here to ask for my help?”

“Because you didn’t suggest it,” said Laurent.

“And because there is limited opportunity for damage, if I turn the negotiations sour out of spite,” she said.

“That too.”

Jokaste turned her elegant chin to an even more elegant angle. “But it’s not much of a test if I know that going in, is it? I could play along, while you let me loose with this wooden sword. Bide my time until you trust me with something that has an actual edge.”

“You could,” Laurent allowed.

The two of them gazed at one another. Laurent moved none of the muscles in his face from their pleasant expression. Jokaste had a smile playing around her mouth.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll do it. I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Why, Lady Jokaste,” said Laurent, rising. “Anyone would think you were bored.”


	26. Miss Fisher AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _captive prince miss fisher au!!!!!_

“What’s the issue, Constable?”

“He-–I _told_ him it was a crime scene, Inspector.”

Damen, using his handkerchief on the doorknob, pushed the bathroom door fully open. The blond young man standing at the sink, fiddling with his cuffs, did not seem overly concerned that he was sharing his primping space with the body of the late Richard Lyle. He did not seem overly concerned with anything. Damen’s breath still stopped in his throat, for an inconvenient moment, when the head lifted and the brilliant gaze met his in the mirror. Christ. He was like something from a Christmas card; or the pages of a magazine, more like, given the pale trousers and the rich blue waistcoat, every fold perfect, every garment probably costing more than Damen’s monthly wage.

“Sir,” said Damen. “I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.”

“Ah,” said this person. “You would be the Inspector Akielos with whose presence I have been threatened.”

“That’s right,” Damen said pleasantly. “Might I have your name, then?”

“Laurent, Lord de Vere.”

Damen took pity on Pallas and dismissed him with a wave. He would have been within his rights to resort to force in the form of a firm grip on the arm, at this point. Instead he leaned against the door, watching Laurent, Lord de Vere, turn on the tap and run one of his shirtsleeves under the stream. The water in the basin ran dark red.

“Washing the blood off?” Damen enquired.

Somewhat to his surprise, that won him neither defensiveness nor a snapping admonition. Rather, a flash of an amused look. “Clumsy oaf of a butler spilled some wine on it. I wasn’t about to leave it to stain.” The accent wasn’t French, but it was so upper-class as to be almost indistinguishable from British.

“Have you been in Melbourne long, Lord de Vere?”

“Stepped off the boat two days ago, Inspector,” was the calm reply. “I spent most of the war in Paris, but my family’s here. Or what’s left of it. Dickie’s a friend of my uncle’s; I just dropped by to tell him I’d arrived in the country. Terrible business.”

Damen had been a policeman for long enough to be wary of information freely offered. He watched the polished toe of Laurent’s shoe, in his peripheral vision, but it strayed nowhere near the corpse.

“And what were you doing, in Paris, during the war?”

“This and that,” said Laurent vaguely.

Probably availing himself of black market brandy and complaining to the authorities when the clubs were closed, Damen thought uncharitably. He saw no need to share his own war experiences with this entitled dandy of an aristocrat, even if he could already tell he would be having dreams about those full lips and the pale, nimble fingers now twisting the tap back to neutral.

“No matter your sartorial emergency, Lord de Vere, this is still the scene of a potential homicide.”

“Oh, it’s definitely a homicide,” said Laurent, careless. “But this isn’t the scene of it; the body was quite obviously moved here after death. And after someone removed both of his rings. If that helps hurry things along at all, _Inspector_.”

He shook his cuff briskly over the sink and turned around, that insolent blue gaze meeting Damen’s fully and head-on for the first time. _Go on_ , that gaze challenged. _Ask me how I know._

Damen bit the inside of his cheek. He was not charmed. He was not intrigued. He was–-

Oh, to hell with it.

“Fine,” he said. “Show me what you found.”


	27. possessive Laurent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _i would love to see you write jealous/possessive Laurent_

“But you left,” Damen says. “You left the city at noon.”

“Yes,” Laurent says. “Right now I am on the road to Varenne.”

Damen swallows. “This is risky.”

“I was careful. No one saw me.”

“Laurent-–”

“No one saw me.”

Something about the way Laurent is standing, one hand wrapped around the carved post of their bed, is both familiar and unfamiliar at once. It is, Damen realises, a kind of wariness that Laurent doesn’t find necessary with Damen any more. He is holding himself with ruthless control, as though something terrible will happen if he lets himself relax.

“Has something gone wrong?” Damen asks. He’s still no great hand at deception, though anger is easy enough, and Laurent was the one who pointed out that nobody would expect Damen’s feelings to be anything but mixed. Even if they are supposed to be fighting, even if they aren’t speaking, Damen’s eyes can still follow his husband with hunger.

“No,” Laurent says. “We’re still safe. It shouldn’t be much longer. Joran believes I’m ready to do almost anything out of spite.”

“Is this sneaking around for my sake?” Damen says, with a fraction of a smile. “Despite what you may think, I can survive a month sleeping apart without beating down your door in the middle of the night.”

“So I see,” Laurent says. There’s a strange, off-balance moment. Laurent removes his hand from the bed post and flicks it, casual, in Damen’s direction. “You have half the court thinking they might actually have a chance at the position of King’s mistress. Or the male equivalent.”

Damen looks at him. Laurent looks back, unwavering.

“Laurent,” Damen says.

Laurent inhales; his chest rises with it. He holds the breath like a waterskin over-filled, and says, “Come here.”

Damen obeys.

Laurent’s control doesn’t break until Damen is within arm’s range, when Laurent reaches out to drag him forward the last step. Then halts him again, half a foot away, with a fist full of Damen’s clothing. The angle of Laurent’s elbow, the line of his wrist, are like architecture. Immovable. Laurent leans carefully over his own hand, and rests his forehead on Damen’s chin. Damen can feel the hot, steady air of Laurent’s exhalation against the hollow of his neck.

Damen says, with slow pleasure, “Are you jealous?”

Laurent raises his head. His eyes are dry and intense; his mouth is dangerous.

“Yes.”

Damen lifts a hand and slides all of his fingers over and past Laurent’s ear, gentle on the side of his skull, savouring the feather-softness of Laurent’s hair.

“Do you miss me?”

“Yes.”

“Can _you_ survive a month-–”

“Be quiet,” Laurent says, savage, and turns his head into Damen’s hand, burying his eyes blindly against Damen’s wrist. He hasn’t released his grip on Damen’s clothes.

Some strange pottery in Damen’s chest cracks and spills warmth through his body, drenching him with tenderness, so full and so urgent that it’s almost like pain. This is Laurent, who can eviscerate hardened politicians with his tongue, who can order armies to their knees. Who is still so unpracticed at asking for what he wants.

Damen draws Laurent’s head towards him, then tilts it and kisses the full, deadly mouth. Laurent’s tongue flicks out against his like a whip. Damen almost groans with the relief of it, the sense of stepping out into fresh air after weeks underground.

“No one saw you?” Damen says. “Then we have until first light.”


	28. Pallas and Lazar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _The Taming of Pallas? There is nearly nothing on him and Lazar. Possibly one during the okton, or one during camping, or one while Pallas wrestles Damen in the nude. XD (or anything, rly)_

The food was good, Lazar had to admit. The bread was flat and soft with patches of smoky, bitter char on either side, and it mopped up the oils left behind by the herbed olives and the dripping strips of meat that had been piled high on every plate. Lazar would consider himself warily in favour of an alliance with the barbarians if meant a few more meals like this one, coming as it did at the end of a day of semi-amicable contest and spectacle.

The hall was lit with candles. Lazar wasn’t sure he felt comfortable lounging like a swooning lady, so he was sitting on the long couch as though it were a normal bench, nibbling at wedges of fresh fruit and watching the party of royals and nobles.

The Akielon lord, Makedon, gave a bark of approving laughter as Laurent threw some sort of Akielon spirit down his throat. Lazar had a moment of fierce pride. That was his Prince, who had beat or at least equalled the Akielons at their own showy sport, and now was matching them drink for drink. Damianos was watching the Prince as well, his own cup held absently between his fingers. Lazar would wager a month’s wages that Damianos had forgotten everything but the pale column of the Prince’s neck and the way the Prince licked stray drops from his lips.

Lazar let out his breath, amused, and let his own gaze stray back to where it had been before he’d determinedly distracted himself. The young Akielon solider was standing apart from his fellows, leaning against the wall, staring with a glum face at nothing in particular. There was a scratch on his cheek. His arms, slender but well muscled, were left entirely bare by the ridiculous Akielon garment.

Lazar had mocked Damianos, before they all knew he was Damianos. He’d been unable to believe that the Akielon slave, their commander, was able to exist so closely with Prince Laurent, and with such strange intensity in the way they interacted, without one of them fucking the other.

That was then.

Now, Lazar mused, the gods were playing the kind of game that the gods liked to play with mortals. Lazar couldn’t keep his eyes from the play of candlelight along the fine dark skin of Pallas’s cheek. He heard his own voice, directed at Jord: _What’s it like, having an aristocrat suck your dick?_

Yes. The gods, bastard whoresons that they were, had decided that payment was due.

“You’re exactly his type, if that helps.”

Lazar nearly startled. It was one of the other Akielon soldiers who’d competed in the okton. Aktis. The man was holding an open bottle of wine, almost full, and he seated himself next to Lazar with a heaviness that said it wasn’t the first bottle he’d gotten his hands on that evening. 

Lazar considered denying it, but abandoned the idea after only a moment.

“Is his Veretian any better than yours?” he asked instead. It was a token insult only; Aktis’s Veretian was halting, but clear.

“Oh, much worse,” said Aktis. “But surely that doesn’t matter.” He made a series of obscene and emphatic gestures. Wine sloshed over the lip of the bottle and Lazar smiled despite himself.

“He doesn’t look in the mood for company,” Lazar pointed out.

“He doesn’t know how to feel,” Aktis said. “Your Prince looks like a dainty porcelain plate, but he’s got balls of cast iron. He saved his life, in the okton, and then rode a perfect game. A man might be questioning a few things, after that. Might be particularly open to a kind ear and a strong arm.” He nudged Lazar in the side.

“You call yourself a friend,” Lazar said dryly.

Aktis grinned at him, merry. “I’m just thinking of what’s best for him. And our countries, of course. Go on.” He pressed the bottle into Lazar’s hand. “Long live the alliance.”


	29. Laurent remembering the palace baths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Laurent's POV of the scene in the palace baths would be fascinating._

Water falls onto Laurent’s neck and shoulders, the whole pitcher at once, a weight almost like a blow. It’s as good as fingers digging into the muscles there, and he gives a small gasp of relief as the soap sluices off him and to the floor.

“I remember the first time I did this,” says Damen.

Laurent, off guard, has a mind running along other roads, and so it takes a few seconds for the memory to spring forward. They are standing in the baths; Damen is behind him, attentive, having undressed Laurent with practiced hands, a a private ritual that neither of them are willing to abandon. Damen has set down the pitcher now. His hand on Laurent’s ribcage is gentle, but Laurent’s skin prickles and shivers, wary, beneath it. He remembers.

“Yes,” Laurent says. His voice is completely even. “I imagine neither of us were enjoying ourselves to this extent.”

“If I hadn’t caught your wrist,” Damen says, “what would you have tried next?”

“You want to talk about this.”

“We should be able to.”

Laurent turns around, careful of his bare feet on the tiles, which are now slippery with soap. He can follow Damen’s reasoning. They’ve managed to talk frankly about Auguste, the single greatest shadow that hangs over their union. Anything else should be comparatively easy. Laurent has spent hours tracing scars by moonlight on Damen’s back, sleepless and tense and aching; yes, Laurent is _able_ to retread all of those events in their history that send regret in hot spirals through his stomach. He is _able_ to do all sorts of things.

“Why?” he says, quiet.

“Trust me,” Damen says.

A volley that Laurent has no defences against; not any more. The totality of his trust still strikes him at odd moments, when he is walking from place to place, like a dream. Like an unreal and precious object.

Laurent says, deliberate, “You never stood a chance. I had the advantage of your identity. I would have insulted your father, your mother, and every aspect of your kingdom that you held dear. I didn’t need your desire. Your pride was enough. I would have ripped open your soul if it gave me the excuse I needed.”

“To flog me.”

“To kill you.” The shivers have spread. Laurent ignores them, and looks up into Damen’s face. It is his whole unlikely life that could be the dream; Laurent could wake up tomorrow, sixteen and completely alone, grown up wrapped around his anger and fear and loss like a rose bush, all twists and green thorns. It would not surprise him. It might, however, kill him. “You know that.”

“I know.”

Damen is touching Laurent’s side again. He moves his fingers, a small caress.

The air between them is like the undisturbed edge of a lake. Damen’s eyes are warm, and the _why_ of this shudders abruptly through Laurent. The gold cuffs are the evidence of their forgiveness of one another, but Laurent has worn his now for long enough that it might be part of his skin. Now he has spoken terrible words and Damen has absorbed them, forgiveness intact. The sensation is like the metal closing around Laurent’s wrist for the first time, in the tent. Something bright and unexpectedly heavy. Something assured.

“You could take the skin off my back,” says Laurent. It is not what he meant to say. “You. I wouldn’t-–you wouldn’t even have to tie me to the post.”

Damen blinks. His hand trails up the wet skin of Laurent’s chest to rest on Laurent’s shoulder. He says, wondering, “I believe you.”


	30. young Laurent and Damen: part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _how about an AU base in this line of the book??? 'Thank you, I know exactly how it would have been. You and Auguste would have been slapping each other on the back and watching tournaments, and I would have been trailing around tugging at your sleeve, trying to get a look in edgewise.' I would love to read to see Laurent trying to get Damien attention <3<3<3 _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (part 1/2)

“I feel as though my technique is about to be ripped apart,” Damen says, between puffs.

“What do you mean?” Auguste asks, smiling down at him. His hands are on his knees, and his shoulders heave with each breath; he is still faring better than Damen, who was knocked to the ground when Auguste disarmed him at the end of that last furious, ten-minute bout, and is yet to stand up again. That fight was the hardest Damen has ever worked to keep his footing. It was glorious. Any moment now his lungs will stop burning.

Auguste follows Damen’s gaze, to where Laurent is sitting on the steps.

“I had an instructor who gave me that exact same look,” Damen says.

Auguste gives a breathless laugh. “I’ve never seen him so often at the practice hall, before this week.”

Damen lets his head thump back onto the ground. Staring at the beams of the ceiling, he is radiantly thankful for Auguste of Vere. It could have been so much worse. It could have been a trial by diplomacy, stilted ceremonies, the two of them poking around in search of common ground. Instead there is this easy, regal young soldier of a prince, whose enthusiasm for every kind of sport matches Damen’s own. He is everything Damen hoped for in a fellow heir. It bodes well for their kingships, and the relationship between Vere and Akielos; an alliance does not have to be friendly, but there’s no denying it helps.

Before he arrived here in Arles, Damen didn’t give the younger prince, Laurent, much thought. There was no pointed hope, no expectation of friendship there. _A quiet boy_ , he was told. Damen pictured a child, hovering in Auguste’s shadow.

Prince Laurent is fifteen. Quiet, yes, but slim and sharp and lovely, with a way of speaking that makes Damen want to hold himself straighter, or at least inspect his clothes for smudges.

Damen hauls himself to his feet, and walks over to where Laurent is sitting. He is still a little breathless.

“Damianos,” Laurent says in greeting.

That perfect posture, that gently closed expression; and then those blue eyes like a bright winter morning. Even the long, pale fingers, folded elegantly in Laurent’s lap as though he wouldn’t know which end of a sword to grasp, can’t shake Damen’s impression of his most demanding swordmasters.

“Laurent.”

Damen bows, where etiquette does not demand that he bow. He’s thinking. He remembers being young and wanting nothing better than to be included in Kastor’s games, but Laurent is explicitly uninterested in these kind of violent pursuits. Damen does not want to embarrass him with failure, or look like he’s trying to show off.

He wants, he realises suddenly, this poised boy’s approval. It is a strange sensation. It inspires him to gamble.

“I hear there is good riding in the hills outside the city,” says Damen. “Would you show me?”

And Laurent’s face opens, like a door pushed wide.


	31. young Laurent and Damen: part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _I'd love to see an AU where Auguste didn't die, and his new BFF Damen has to tell him that he's started courting his younger brother._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (part 2/2)

“The Akielon Prince? Try the stables, your Highness. I believe he and Prince Laurent have just returned from their ride.”

“Of course. Thank you,” says Auguste.

He might have guessed that for himself. While Damen stuck close to his side for the beginning of the visit, involving himself with Auguste’s pastimes with enthusiasm, now Auguste will not see him for hours at a time. Damen rides with Laurent every day, without fail, and once Auguste found them in the library, arguing over some obscure point of military history while Laurent ordered book after book to be brought from the shelves to support his claims.

Auguste is glad of it. His reserved brother has a new brightness to him, and Auguste has suffered a few pangs of guilt, that it should take a foreign visitor to show him how Laurent alters-–flourishes-–under attention.

The effect has been noticed by more than just Auguste. The eyes of the court, long dismissive, have begun to follow Laurent with interest. Auguste has let himself realise for the first time that his little brother is on the cusp of manhood, royal and beautiful. Another few months and the court will be laying wagers around his virginity; another year and Auguste will be inundated with direct offers for his hand.

The grooms have taken charge of their horses, when Auguste reaches the stables. Peering at an angle through a window he can see Damen and Laurent standing in the doorway leading out into the courtyard, halted absently, as though in no hurry to step out into the sun.

Auguste almost calls out to them. But their bodies are turned to one another, and Laurent is dusty and happy, flushed with air and exercise. A spark of mischief, the subterfuge that Laurent loyally believes Auguste to be free of, keeps Auguste in the narrow shadow outside the window. Watching.

“No, it was bold, the way you took that fence,” Damen says. “You’re one of the best riders I’ve seen.”

“I think you are exaggerating, Damianos of Akielos,” Laurent says sternly, but he looks pleased.

“I’ve certainly never seen anyone it suits as well as it does you.”

Damen reaches out and tidies a lock of Laurent’s hair, which has become caught and tangled. His hand lingers longer than the motion requires.

The atmosphere thickens. Auguste realises what is happening at the same time that his brother does. Damen, unhurried, moves his hand down and takes hold of Laurent’s own. Laurent’s face is a flurry of quick, subtle emotions: uncertainty, flattery, pleasure.

“I,” Laurent says. Nothing else comes out of his mouth for a long moment. And then, as Damen lifts Laurent’s hand with the clear intent to kiss it: “What are you–-Damen, can’t you at least let me _wash_ first?”

Auguste has to bite down on his cheek at the plaintive, almost petulant tone. Damen doesn’t manage even that much: he breaks into laughter with Laurent’s knuckles paused a breath away from his lips. Laurent is not used to being laughed at; a frown flickers on his brow. But there is nothing even remotely like mockery in Damen’s expression.

“Laurent,” Damen says patiently. “I am trying to pay court. Fussing over a bit of dirt isn’t very romantic.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” says Laurent. His eyes are huge. His arm, stretched between them, is shaking a little.

“Yes,” Damen says. “I enjoy your company. I like riding with you, and talking to you. And I have spent the last four days wanting very badly to kiss you.”

Laurent says, “Oh.”

“ _And_ you are more than clever enough to help me think of how I am going to break the news to Auguste.”

Laurent blinks. “You haven’t asked him?”

“No.”

“I suppose this way, if I reject your overtures, it will be less embarrassing for you,” Laurent says, assessing.

Damen grins. “I thought it was more your business than his.”

Auguste sees that hit home: the pure and easy respect there, over and above the admiration. He decides that he will only make it a _little_ bit awkward and cheerfully humiliating when Damen approaches him about this.

“I see,” says Laurent.

“Are you rejecting my overtures?”

Laurent appears to realise that his hand is still in Damen’s. He stares at his own fingers for a short while, during which they curl and tighten.

“I didn’t say that,” he says.

When he looks back up at Damen’s face, he’s smiling.


	32. Fast & Furious AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _modern au with damen and laurent as street racers_

Damen stares at his knuckles instead of trying to unfold them from where he’s gripping the steering wheel. He breathes through his adrenalin while his heart slams jubilantly around his chest. He can feel the size of the smile on his face. An incredulous laugh is trying to burst out of him, and he feels like it might echo and whoop from one distant cliff to another if he lets it out. Jesus _fuck_. That was maybe better than the best sex he’s had in his life. And certainly enough to grab Laurent’s attention, along with-–hopefully–-enough respect for Damen’s driving skills that he’ll be invited to fill the gap in their crew. Allowed into the inner circle of Laurent’s secrets.

He climbs out of the car, closes the door it and leans against it, looking across at where Laurent is doing the same. The slam of Laurent’s car door is quieter than his own; Damen would have expected a fit of temper, three days ago, but he knows Laurent better now.

Laurent, who barely looks old enough to hold a driving license, and who races as though daring the track to claim his life the way it claimed his brother’s. He’s a slim, too-pretty boy of twenty, and the men of this particular underworld talk about him as though he’s an open flame, a sparking engine near a pool of gasoline: volatile, and not to be handled. _Kid’s got balls of sheer fucking steel_ , Damen’s contact said.

Which must be true, because having just lost a race against Damen for pink slips, Laurent looks him straight in the eye and says, “Double or nothing?” in a voice like vodka poured straight from the freezer.

Behind Laurent, Nicaise–-who is _definitely_ not old enough to drive, not that it stops him-–rolls his eyes and turns to whisper something to Jord, their mechanic.

“With what?” Damen says. He’d laugh the offer off, but the further under Laurent’s skin he can get, the better. He steps into the rough circle that’s formed around them, centering the focus of the crowd. “I just won your car. And I don’t think your sidekick’s going to let you put his up next.”

“Fuck you,” says Nicaise.

Laurent gives Damen a thoughtful look, and saunters forward to meet him in the space between the cars. Headlights and dirty floodlights and just a touch of frigid moonlight combine to make a riot of gleaming shades in his pale hair.

“If you win,” he says, calm and clear, “you can fuck me over the hood of whichever one you like.”

Noise erupts around them. Damen’s brain stalls and grinds like a cheap gearbox under the hands of a nervous beginner. He’s blown his best advantage now that Laurent knows about the nitro and has seen how Damen handles himself on the track; surely, surely the untouchable and venomous Laurent wouldn’t make a wager like that in front of witnesses if he suspected for even a fraction of a second that he might lose. Damen thinks about what his supervisors at the Bureau would say if he lost this race and had to tell them that the hundreds of thousands of dollars his car represents are now in the hands of a criminal.

But Laurent is gazing at him, a curl of danger and delight on his lips; Laurent’s mouth looks as though it would taste like taking a hairpin bend twenty miles an hour too fast. And as much as Damen fights to keep the Deputy Director’s furious expression in his mind, it’s wiped clean by the image of Laurent gasping and writhing, clenching around him, sweat slicking his graceful neck, pinned between Damen and the still-warm hood of his car.

If Laurent’s prepared to make that offer, he’s underestimating how much Damen wants to win.

Damen swallows. His mouth is drier than the desert that stretches out around them, night-grey sand bleeding into the pinpricked sky.

“You’re on,” he says, and holds out his hand.


	33. Pride & Prejudice AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _i would absolutely DIE for a pride and prejudice AU of any kind_

“I think Lord Damianos was the most handsome man there,” Aimeric said.

“And the rudest,” said Laurent. He marked his place in the book with a finger, but was resigned to the chapter remaining unfinished tonight. In truth he was too tired to concentrate for long; the party had run late, and the strain of being bright and well-behaved and effusive and polite, in turn, was finally taking hold of Laurent’s limbs.

“Lord, I agree,” said Nicaise. “He had _such_ a disagreeable expression on his face when he walked in.”

Indeed; Damianos had looked around the room as though affronted by every aspect of it. Someone had tentatively offered a conversational opening around the admirable skill of their hostess in putting together a room, and Damianos had raised a ghastly spectre of awkwardness by declaring stiffly that the Veretian style had always been too ornate for his taste.

“Stop sprawling and get up off the floor,” Laurent told Nicaise. “Your best clothes are all over dust.”

Nicaise merely rolled over and propped his chin in his hands. “I asked him to dance, and he looked right down his nose at me. And do you know what he said? _I didn’t know it was the custom in Vere for children to partake of adult pursuits_. A child, me!” Nicaise pursed his lips. “A pity he’s so unpleasant. Piles of money, property all over the place, and he had lovely, strong-looking hands, don’t you think?”

He had. And his eyes had been dark and deep above the crisp white of his shirt, and there was something about the way his coat sat on his broad shoulders that had made Laurent’s skin itch with a sensation that was hot and cold and curious.

Laurent set his book down and picked at the laces of his sleeve, starting the long process of undressing, and forced his mind away from the memory.

“You are an insufferable flirt, Nicaise,” Auguste said; too mildly, in Laurent’s opinion. Nicaise could do with being sharply checked from time to time. One day the boy would flirt himself into serious trouble, if not into total ruin, and Aimeric was more than silly enough to be showing signs of following his younger brother’s example.

“Don’t worry,” Laurent said, keeping his voice light. “Lord Damianos and his twenty thousand a year refused me a dance as well. Clearly our family does not live up to his lofty Akielon standards.”

“Lady Jokaste did tell me he prefers women,” said Auguste. “Perhaps he reserves his affections for them exclusively, and he did not wish to hurt your feelings by saying so.”

Laurent forced a laugh. He had taken an instant dislike to the Lady Jokaste, with her arch looks and intricately braided blonde hair, and the way she hung from Damianos’s arm as though to protect him from being contaminated by the inferior society which surrounded them.

“That would have been _less_ hurtful,” Laurent said. “An aversion to men is unfortunate, but one can understand it; to claim not to dance at all, when the objection is clearly to the partner and not the activity, is unforgivable.”

“And he must like men at least a little,” Aimeric chimed in. “I saw him bring a drink to that shy mouse Erasmus.”

“I thought that was a kind gesture,” said Auguste. “Erasmus is only a farmer’s son; you know he feels ill at ease at these gatherings, and half the people in the room were snubbing him entirely.”

“Auguste,” Laurent said, shaking his head at his older brother in exasperation. “You think well of everyone, and it has no place in this conversation.”

“No,” Nicaise said cheerfully. “Some of us have been rejected. As such, this is a strictly a bitching session.”

“ _Nicaise_ ,” Auguste and Laurent said in unison, while Aimeric smothered a shocked laugh in a cushion.

“It hardly matters, anyhow,” said Laurent. “If his behaviour tonight was anything to go by, I expect Lord Damianos will make his excuses to escape Vere as soon as possible. With any luck, we may never be forced to endure his company again.”


	34. Laurent time travels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _I'm in love with time travel stories, so I'd really love something with Laurent time traveling. Maybe he could somehow prevent Auguste's death? Or you could go the angstier route of him being too late to save his brother. Or you could straight up dump him back to when he gets Damen as a slave._

Only the fact that Laurent has spent a long time ruthlessly training himself to hide his inner workings allows him to remain still and silent, as he opens his eyes and realises where, _when_ , he has ended up.

His shoulder twinges, as it often does when he’s worried, but it’s a phantom ache. This body is unmarked. This body has never ridden into action against his uncle’s troops, or drilled men to the point of collapse. It has no scar from the agonising twist of a blade, a pain that should have been unbearable and yet, somehow, had to be borne. This body has never been touched as Damen touches him, with such tenderness and teasing and love.

Laurent presses his lips together, then releases them.

 _This is where you are_ , he tells himself. _Now bear it._

Looking at Damen in front of him, clad in the brief, brutal garb of a slave, makes Laurent’s stomach churn. It’s only half distaste, with perhaps a dash of horrified sympathy. The other half of it is remembering how pleased he was, how _vindicated_ he felt, when he first saw Damianos of Akielos, Prince-Killer, the target on which Laurent had pinned all the blame for his life’s miseries–-if not, if this, _if only_ -–forced to his knees and entirely at Laurent’s mercy.

If only. The irony of it grabs at Laurent’s mouth, and he feels his lips start to twist.

“Leave us,” he says, disguising it.

One of the guards frowns. He says, uneasily, “Your Highness–-”

“I do not believe,” says Laurent, “that my direction was at all unclear.”

He has more than a year’s experience commanding soldiers, and a lifetime’s experience controlling his voice. Soon the room is empty but for the two of them, and Laurent is exhaling slowly enough to force his pulse into something like normality. He feels at itch at his wrist, an oddness that makes him want to touch, and realises he misses the weight of gold there.

Damen, wearing both cuffs and heavy chains, is silent. His eyes are downcast in the calculated feigning of submission, but tense muscles stand out on his neck and bent shoulders, and the twin creases on either side of his nose shout the contempt he doesn’t know he’s showing. Laurent remembers. That contempt made his blood seethe, and his careful plans turn to so much steam inside his skull. Now he looks at Damen’s smooth back-– _unmarked_ –-and his breath catches. For the first time he believes in the benefit of this kind of second chance. Actions, once made, that can be unmade.

He should release Damen immediately. That would be the right thing to do.

But if Laurent helps Damen to escape, then Damen will simply rush back to Ios at the first opportunity: headlong, unthinking. Unprepared. And if Laurent knows anything, he knows that neither of them can do this without the other.

Or…is that fair? _Could_ they? Now that Laurent has the advantage and knows his uncle’s game from start to finish, could he play his way to victory on his own?

Perhaps he could. But Damen would be nothing to him–-no, be fair, be _precise_. He would be nothing to Damen. And Damen would be one man in the face of Kastor’s hatred and the Regent’s machinations; Jokaste can’t be relied upon to save him twice.

Laurent’s mind is a child’s toy, spinning in the dust, or an okton course busy with the thunder of hooves and the whistling danger of spears. Aimeric. Govart. Pascal. He knows everything; he could do it, he could–-oh gods, _Nicaise_ , he could keep Nicaise intact and alive, he could reach into the morass of his uncle’s web and pluck out the innocent. The possibilities swirl and threaten to consume him.

Damen has raised his head. No doubt Laurent has been silent for long enough that Damen suspects a trick, or is simply becoming impatient.

Laurent’s head aches. He needs two nights by lamplight and endless sheafs of paper to sketch out all the ways he could play this; he needs to follow each thread ruthlessly to its end, and snip the tapestry down to its bones. He could, he is now fairly certain, do it alone.

He doesn’t want to.

He wants Damen across the table from him, giving him strategy, talking him down from anger, being the best half of Laurent’s soul and the only partner he could ever need. He wants Damen in this _with_ him.

Laurent moves. He kneels down, suddenly, in front of Damen. He meets Damen’s startled gaze and compels it to hold.

“Your mother’s favourite place was her summer palace, outside of Ios,” he says. “There is a marble carving of a bird there, set just above the main entrance. Your brother gave you the scar on your thigh when you were thirteen, and it has only just occurred to you to wonder how deadly his intention was, when he came at you with the blade. Nikandros warned you about Jokaste, and he was right to do so; he would warn you about me, for the colour of my hair and eyes, and he’d be right to do that as well.”

Damen’s eyes are wide and shocked. He is showing everything on his face. This is the old Damen, before he learned from Laurent and Laurent’s treatment of him how to shutter and manoeuvre and dissemble. The bruise of betrayal is still vivid on his face.

“Damianos,” Laurent says; the name like a knife, like a gift, like a flame between them. “Damianos. Listen to me. I am going to tell you the truth.”


	35. Regency marriage-of-convenience AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Can I request a Damen/Laurent fake dating or marriage of convenience AU?_

“You’re wondering if I’m foxed, to suggest such a thing.”

“Not at all,” said Damen, who had been wondering exactly that.

“It’s entirely a question of blunt, you see.”

“You speak plainly, my lord,” said Damen.

“Yes,” said Laurent, Lord de Vere. “I do.”

Damen judged it wise to keep his hands clasped behind his back, a parade-ground posture he could hold for hours on end if necessary. He was starting to wish he had the means to become a trifle bosky himself; a few glasses of claret might make this interview easier, though probably would not manage to render it less bizarre. The room was warm, the fire crackling merrily in the wide grate, and de Vere leaned one elbow on the mantlepiece in an elegant posture of repose. Waves of blond hair sat beautifully on his brow, brushed back in the latest style, as befitting a creature of fashion.

“Forgive me, my lord,” Damen said, “but you give rather the impression of some great need for haste.”

A besieged sigh parted the flawless lips. “My late father, on my uncle’s advice, placed some damn fool conditions on my inheritance: I must marry by my twenty-first birthday, to show I’m serious about my familial duties and the succession, or I don’t see a penny. And the title’s stripped from me too.”

Damen said, as delicately as he could manage, “Surely, there are any number of people who would be more than happy to…”

 _Snatch up an earldom_ , was the less than flattering latter part of that sentence. Neither was Damen about to mention the Earl’s considerable personal beauty; so far, Damen had the impression that the man’s personality was that of a spoilt and impatient child, which might have gone some way to explaining why he found himself so lacking in suitors.

De Vere waved a petulant hand. “In truth, my _inheritance_ is for the most part a mound of debts. It will do me no good to marry a merely _fair_ portion, and none of the true eligibles will have me, as my uncle has made widely known in our circles the conditions under which I find myself. So as to prevent me from leading some poor unsuspecting heir or heiress by the nose,” he added, with a twist of those fine lips. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll give up my father’s title without a fight. I am the Seventh Earl de Vere, and I will remain so.”

An unlooked-for stab of fellow-feeling plucked lightly at Damen’s heart. “When it comes to the succession,” he said, “I cannot help but wonder if you suspect me of a more flexible biology than I do, in fact, possess.”

A surprised and surprising glint of humour, which stood strongly in contrast to the vacuous expression, flitted across his lordship’s face. He turned away, gazing down into the fire.

“I imagine that can be taken care of in the manner that these things usually are,” he said carelessly. “And there’s no clause to specify the sex of my spouse. Anyhow, that’s the long and the short of it, sir. You have money. And I have a title-–an earldom is nothing to sneeze at, you know.” A bite stole into his voice. “Though perhaps you are holding out for a dukedom? The Viscount Carlborough will inherit any day now, when his father has the decency to drop off the perch. Or–-do you know the Akielos family, of Wiltshire?”

Damen was grateful beyond words for the fact that de Vere was facing away, as he felt his own shock betray him with a quiver of his mouth and chin. He mastered it quickly. When he spoke, his voice was all stolid respect.

“I believe I’ve heard them spoken of, though I can hardly claim to move in their circles.”

“Obviously,” said Lord de Vere, with crushing coolness. He turned back to Damen. “They are excessively good _ton_ ; or rather, they were. The eldest son met with shipwreck on returning from military service on the Continent, and his brother, born of the old duke’s second wife, inherited. He’s not well regarded, Lord Kastor. And he’s to marry his mistress, or so goes the talk, and everyone knows that Miss Jokaste is nothing more than a mere country squire’s natural-born daughter.”

Only the fact that Damen had carefully affixed his expression of casual disinterest to his face allowed him to survive that sentence unscathed. He also found within himself a positively seditious flare of resentment, to hear such unabashed snobbery spoken aloud.

Damen was of higher birth than even de Vere; he was, indeed, a duke born and raised, and for most of his life would have held these exact views and acted in a manner just as high in the instep. And yet he owed all the happiness and success of his past five years to Charls, the cloth merchant who had offered a penniless English soldier a position first as a guard and then, as their conversations led to a growing fondness and intimacy, as a member of his personal household. Damen had learned all there was to know about the cloth trade in England and France; Charls, a cheerfully childless bachelor, had treated Damen as a son. Damen had been truly grief-stricken at his mentor’s unexpected death, and just as truly surprised to learn that Charls had left his considerable fortune entirely to Damen; much to the horror of a parcel of cousins, who had thought themselves in possession of plenty of time yet in which to toad-eat and curry favour with their wealthy relative.

Damen said, in a voice dry as old maps, “And here you are, _my lord_ , offering for an orphan tradesman, son of nobody of any consequence whatsoever.”

There was a pause. And then, under Damen’s eyes, the young Seventh Earl de Vere underwent a transformation. A ripple passed across his cheeks, like the first wind across the surface of a becalmed sea, and it left his jaw somehow firmer. He took a breath which raised his expensively-clad shoulders, and exhaled with a short, audible huff of determination. The blue eyes which met Damen’s were keener than even Charls’s had ever been over the negotiating table; the voice which emerged from his lordship’s mouth had been stripped of its bored, affected accents, and was instead as dry and sharp as Damascus steel.

“My uncle would like nothing better than to see me ruined. He thought to keep me in ignorance of this particular legal clause; it took me two years to track down a copy of the true will. He tells me that the estate has dwindled through my older brother’s mismanagement, before Auguste died; I think he is lying. I think that he has squirrelled the funds away for himself, with our agent’s help. But I cannot fight him with empty coffers.”

Damen was speechless: rocked, as though by the deafening silence following cannon-blast, by the difference in demeanour. This man was miles away from the heedless dandy he had encountered when he first entered this room.

De Vere went on, in that changed and ruthless voice, “It is true: you are nobody. But I do not presume to know your life. Perhaps there are battles for which you find yourself similarly under-equipped. I can give you the full heft of my name, if you will give me access to your fortune.”

That was a true blow, and it hit home. Damen had no proof at all as to his noble identity, and no evidence of the crimes that had been committed against him. The wretched man who had finally confessed to Damen to being paid, by Kastor, to sabotage the _Valiant_ to the point of wreckage, had died not a week later of drink and disease. Damen required resources, not only of money but of influence, in order to build his case and bring his brother to justice.

Damen looked Lord de Vere deliberately up and down. He imagined the frigid young man unlaced from the confines of his elaborate cravat, his superbly tailored coat of blue superfine, and the radiant glory of his Hessians where they rose over skin-snug fawn breeches. Damen imagined de Vere’s body over Damen’s in bed, his mouth on Damen’s skin, his fingers pressing Damen open. Damen forced himself to picture all of this partly as an internal revenge for the lordling’s cool self-assurance, and partly to remind himself what he would be letting himself in for, if he agreed to this scheme. But to his surprise a shiver of interest ran through his body, followed by a pooling of heat.

There was a faint flush to de Vere’s cheeks, when Damen’s gaze returned to his face, that Damen did not think was due to the proximity of the fire.

“We need never see one another much, if you do not wish it,” said de Vere, with studied offhandedness. “I do not pretend to offer you any more than an arrangement of convenience. You may keep an office in town, or frequent whatever gaming-hells you desire. I might take my phaeton out for hours at a time, and attend my fencing-master twice daily, and we may be civil strangers to one another over the breakfast table. I daresay many marriages thrive on much less.”

Damen could not name what it was, exactly, that decided him. He only realised, between one scuff of de Vere’s boot on the rich rug and the next, that he had made up his mind.

“I enjoy fencing,” he said mildly.

Another of those glints of humour. “I enjoy card-games.”

“There,” Damen said, extending a hand. “Now we are not strangers, Lord de Vere.”

After a moment of hesitation, Damen found himself with a pale firm hand clasped in his.

“I suppose,” said his lordship, fixing Damen with those devastating blue eyes, “you might as well accustom yourself to addressing me as Laurent.”


	36. Harry Potter AU: part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _More Hogwarts AU pleaseeeeeee!!!_

“Akielos,” said Auguste. “What are you doing here?”

Damen shook Auguste’s hand in greeting. His bright Auror robes were drawing appreciative eyes and murmured comments. Given it was a Hogwarts event, he’d even bothered to wear a Gryffindor tie underneath them, but he’d clearly tied the thing mid-Floo. Laurent’s hands itched to reach up and fix the messy knot; he smoothed down the deep blue satin of his own graduation hood, instead, even though it was already perfect.

Damen said, ruefully, “Laurent wants me to network.”

“Yes,” Laurent said. “Look, there’s Minister Dunthorpe. Why don’t you go and tell him what you told me about the potential for abuse by law enforcement if Malaganis gets his bill passed.”

Damen laughed, nodded again at Auguste, and did as he was told. Laurent would have to check later to make sure he’d remembered to include all the more compelling statistics, but Damen was both deeply likeable and had a knack for dragging people sympathetically along his train of thought if he so much as furrowed his brow; he’d probably manage on his own.

“Oh, I _see_ ,” said Auguste, watching the crowd part for Damen the way crowds usually parted for someone who was six foot and spare change tall and had the authoritative air of an Auror.

“What?”

Auguste raised his eyebrows at Laurent. He too was wearing his old school tie-–his was much neater than Damen’s–-and black robes with the gold edging of a Wizengamot Associate. Off to their left, Divya Balakrishna and the other graduating Slytherin girls were shooting glances at him, then giggling and nudging one another.

“The Head Auror has half his staff working unpaid overtime and the other half combing the North York Moors because of the Whitby murders, and Akielos is using his day off to come to your graduation to…network.”

Laurent felt a flush try to rise into his cheeks at his brother’s sceptical tone. “I knew Dunthorpe would be here,” was all he said.

“That’s right, his daughter’s in your year, isn’t she?”

Aoife Dunthorpe was not only in Laurent’s year, she was in his House. During the graduation ceremony her strawberry blonde hair spilled attractively down over the blue hood as she shook the Headmistress’s hand and accepted prizes for Herbology and Potions. She beamed at Laurent as she walked back to the Ravenclaw table, with the cheerful look of someone who didn’t care that she only managed to beat him in the N.E.W.T. exam by two marks, just that _she beat him_.

Laurent had taken seven N.E.W.T.s in total. He was still recovering from his sleep debt, and when he closed his eyes at night his eyelids still blazed with the angled view from the window of his favourite desk in the library, but it had been worth it. He took out the prizes for all of his subjects except Potions-–damn Aoife, anyway-–and Arithmancy, which went to Olympia Marsh, a Hufflepuff who everyone knew was probably the best arithmancer Hogwarts had ever seen. It was very unfair that she should happen to be in Laurent’s year.

Afterwards, Laurent made a point of talking to all of his teachers individually, trusting that Auguste and Damen were being useful elsewhere. Damen found him again while Laurent was making polite conversation with the Assistant to the Minister for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, in whose department Laurent was about to start working. He’d accepted a junior position at the office for the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad.

“I have to admit, I told him I didn’t understand why he wanted to work there when he could probably have taken any of the graduate jobs he wanted,” was Damen’s contribution.

Laurent had the urge to dig an outraged elbow into Damen’s side. But Gallagher was laughing.

“ _Aurors_ ,” Gallagher said benignly. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. But young Mr. de Vere has good taste.”

Laurent gave a modest shrug. “Charms was always my favourite subject,” he said, which had the advantage of being true. There was also the fact that more Unspeakables were recruited from DMAC than anywhere else, and Laurent planned to spend a fair portion of his early career in the Department of Mysteries.

“Auror Akielos,” the Assistant to the Minister went on, “the grapevine tells me you were involved in that skirmish with a chapter of the Slaughflock? Nasty business, that. Nasty business. Sent a lot of your people to St Mungo’s, so I hear, and wasn’t there one lass who had to undergo _Revitalis_?”

Damen’s eyes flicked sideways to Laurent, fast as a Snitch’s wings; almost too fast to catch. “It was a busy afternoon,” Damen said calmly. “And Auror Kervich is receiving the best possible care.”

Gallagher shook his head. “Nasty business,” he said again.

When Gallagher had excused himself, Laurent took firm hold of Damen’s elbow and directed him out of the Great Hall and into the gardens. Here and there came the flash and click of a wizarding camera or a Muggle smartphone, as proud parents posed with graduating students, but it was a lot quieter out there.

“Laurent,” Damen began.

“I _thought_ I saw-–” Laurent pushed back the draping sleeves of Damen’s robes and turned his wrists into the light, revealing the scars which encircled Damen’s forearms and ran down almost to the backs of his hands, beneath the faint silvery residue left behind by the strongest healing potions. “Damen, that’s venomweed scarring.”

“It was Mhearnaig vines,” Damen corrected him, voice curling warmly around the Gaelic. “You should have taken Herbology.”

Laurent knew when he was being baited. He frowned at the dark lines, running his fingertips over the irregularity of Damen’s skin. “ _You_ should be more careful. I know you’re an Auror and a Gryffindor, but I thought you were at least not so stupid as to almost get yourself killed by shrubbery.”

“You’re worried about me,” Damen said.

“That’s not the point,” said Laurent, unconvincing even to his own ears.

“No, I know.” Damen sounded amused. “What would happen to your grand plans if I died and you didn’t have a future Head Auror who’d do anything for you?”

“Exactly,” said Laurent. Damen’s words caught up with him. He looked up, into Damen’s face, too startled to steel himself against Damen’s smile as he usually would. “Anything?”

Damen’s hand turned in his, grasping Laurent’s fingers. He squeezed them, then let them go.

“You told me to wait,” Damen said, rough, “and I’m waiting.”

 _Anything_ , yes. Even that.

And it had always been Laurent’s intention that they would wait a while longer. This was a terrible time to begin anything; Laurent would start his new job next week and Damen was part of the primary investigation team for the Whitby case, which had the potential to make his career. Neither of them could afford a distraction of this magnitude.

But Laurent was eighteen and he too had been waiting, waiting, waiting, holding himself apart and burying himself in work while his schoolmates discovered sex and romance at the top of their sloppy lungs, gaining a reputation for frigidity when in fact he’d only ever wanted one person: wanted them to the point of violence, painfully incandescent with the knowledge of what he was denying himself. Now Laurent’s hand was tingling and glowing where Damen had touched it, like those pocket hand-warming charms they sold at Quidditch games in winter. He couldn’t stop looking at where Damen’s tongue flicked nervously between his lips.

 _Oh, fuck it_ , Laurent thought. 

He grabbed hold of the red and gold tie, flung aside four years of careful planning, and dragged Damen’s head down to kiss him as though he’d never wanted anything but this.


	37. Preparing for the wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _im gonna be a huge sap and ask for...wedding fic. how do they prepare?? how do they FEEL??? who cries?? (me. i cry)_

“Apologies, Highness,” says the herald wearily. “You muddled the lines about history and lineage.”

“Again,” says Laurent.

Damen sighs, impatient. “This seems needlessly complicated.”

“You have said that,” says Laurent, “four times within the hour.”

“And yet it never stops being true.”

“I know. You wish we could be married in the Akielon style, and be done.”

“We _will_ be married in the Akielon style.”

“A blow to the head and throwing me over your shoulder?”

A hush with the tension of teetering glass falls over the guards and servants in the room. Laurent throws a thin-lipped smile at his betrothed, and feels his skin dance with the knowing heat in the look that Damen throws back at him.

“Oh, it’s different for kings,” Damen says. “We don’t dirty our hands; we get someone else to knock our spouse unconscious. I’ve had ten separate people volunteer for the job.”

Laurent’s face breaks before he can stop it. He’s not entirely on guard, here, surrounded by the activity of two kingdoms and two traditions and one immense, ponderous, all-important ceremony. Someone is trying to fit Damen for some garment or other, and Laurent doesn’t think Damen has noticed yet. His dark eyes are still delighting in Laurent’s laughter.

They will be married in the Akielon style. They will be married in the Veretian style. No head injuries will be involved, but if Laurent has to endure a formal dance that ends with their hands being joined and covered with olive leaves, Damen can put his mind to learning a few lines of recitation.

“Barbarian,” Laurent says lightly.

Damen says, in Akielon, “I wish we could be married today. I am tired of waking up in a world where you aren’t mine. All of this is just…words.”

Laurent’s breath catches. The furtive, curious quiet of the room doubles in intensity.

“Ten minutes,” Laurent says. It’s a dismissal.

When the room has emptied but for the two of them, Laurent goes to the table and flicks through the pages of the Veretian ceremony–along with the added sections for royalty, and a whole new section, the ink barely dry, creatively drawing on a legend of harmony born out of war, to allow for the fact that the King’s intended will not be expected to bring forth heirs in the usual way. He finds what he’s looking for, the call and response, and hands the page to Damen.

“Start at the top,” Laurent says.

Damen raises his eyebrows and reads, “Who walks this path and leaves their shoes behind?”

Laurent says, “I come to you in trust, with the skin of my feet unprotected.”

“Who poured this cup to over-full and spilled water on the floor?”

“I come to you in plenty, and pledge you all that I have.”

“Who stands alone in such a room of souls?”

“I come to you in pride, and give only myself away.”

“Who ground the salt that now sits on your tongue?”

Laurent almost misses the cue. He is remembering one of the few weddings he saw as a child: bare toes beneath the sweep of the bride’s dress, the hem of it wet from stepping willingly across the puddle of water. The groom’s mouth, smiling, open for the white salt.

He says quickly, “I come to you in sorrow, heavy with all the tears yet to come.”

“Who bares their hands of gold and silver, and shows only skin?”

“I come to you in joy, light with my choice.”

“Who.” Damen swallows. “Who holds their heart so still beneath the knife?”

“I come to you in love, with my life’s blood for the taking.”

Damen opens his mouth, looks at the paper, and then lets his hand fall to his side. Awe rims his eyes like bruising fatigue. In the steady light of his expression, Laurent feels unbreakable.

“Just words,” he says.

“You’ve made your point,” Damen says.

“Damen,” Laurent says. “I’m yours already.”


	38. Honeymoon part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Damen and Laurent's honeymoon, please! (Probably long overdue after uniting two countries.) Bonus points for Damen carrying Laurent bridal style over the threshold and, obviously, smut._

Damen wouldn’t dare do it if anyone else was with them, but they’ve snuck away on their own a full night earlier than planned, taking nothing but their horses. Their affronted retinue will catch up with them tomorrow. Under any other circumstances they’d be letting themselves in for a lecture about allowing the royal guard to do their job (from Jord) and a day’s worth of surly looks (also from Jord); they’ll only get to play the newlywed card this once.

It means there’s no audience, approving or otherwise, when Damen halts them a few yards from the arched side entrance to the summer palace, takes the advantage of surprise, and simply lifts Laurent off the ground with one arm beneath his knees and another at his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Laurent demands, stiff and uneven with indignity. He has not deigned to throw even a single arm around Damen for balance.

Damen regards his new husband with affection, as he holds him with all the grace of a poorly-filled sack of apples.

“I thought this one was a Veretian tradition,” Damen says innocently.

“This is because of what I said about you throwing me over your shoulder, isn’t it?”

Damen shrugs. It takes a little effort, given he’s carrying Laurent’s full weight, but he manages it. “I am a barbarian, after all.”

Laurent’s eyes darted to Damen’s biceps during the shrug. Now they return to his face.

“I know that look,” Damen says. “You’re calculating the odds.”

“I’d rather not cause any serious damage,” Laurent says coolly. “I need you intact.”

“How reassuring.”

“My plans for the remainder of the night will require you to exert yourself.”

“Is that so?” says Damen.

There’s a tinderbox in Laurent’s eyes. “ _Strenuously_.”

Damen takes the next few steps with a haste that’s designed to make Laurent’s smile appear.

“You’re welcome to struggle, if it would make you feel better,” Damen offers, “but we both know I’d manage to subdue you in the end.”

Even as he says it, the thought slides between Damen’s ribs like a hot and friendly knife. He sees Laurent’s face change infinitesimally in the same instant, pupils softening in the blue eyes even as Laurent’s cheeks tighten with want. Memory nudges at Damen’s throat. _Do you think I’m just going to flip you over and mount?_

They are still navigating Laurent’s complicated relationship with his own desire. And even though Damen knows, now, the awful reason behind it, he also knows better than to make assumptions.

“Would you enjoy that?” he asks, voice low.

They are paused at the doorway. Part of Damen thinks about the meaning of what he’s doing, beyond the joke. The threshold. A new place. A beginning.

Laurent swallows. He wraps an arm around Damen’s neck and Damen feels a small, interesting pain at his nape, as Laurent digs in with a precise fingernail.

Laurent says, “Carry me inside, and we’ll see.”


	39. Honeymoon part 2 (size/strength kink)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _all i want out of life is laurent POV porn! maybe specifically he figures out there's something in particular he's really, really into and damen is happy to oblige. (possibly related to his obvious size kink) (that guy just deserves to have a lot of really great sex for the rest of his life tbh)_

Lighting the lamps in the main bedchamber would have required Damen to put Laurent down when they entered, instead of teasing him to escape; and besides, they would only be for light, not heat. It is summer. It is the Akielon summer, which is a desert of a season, and even the whitest buildings can’t help but absorb a heat that seems to hum out of them when night falls.

There is only light enough now for Damen to be a shape, his details dimly sketched in, as he grips Laurent’s wrists in one hand between them.

Both of them are breathing quickly, having not yet caught their breath from the last few minutes, which began with Damen asking, _Are you sure?_ and Laurent writhing like a beached fish in answer, driving an elbow beneath his new husband’s ribs, and ended--as they were always going to end--with Damen laughing as he forced Laurent to a standstill.

Laurent shifts his weight, testing, but Damen is immovable. Laurent could plant his feet and straighten his arms, lean all the way back like a man about to climb down a cliff, and Damen would keep him from falling with that single hand.

“Are we done?” Damen asks. His fingers grind Laurent’s unprotected wrist against the cuff on the other.

Laurent grins in the darkness, helplessly happy. “Are you surrendering?”

Damen laughs again and moves, sudden. Laurent is dragged backwards–lifted, almost thrown–and lands, with a disorienting bounce, on the cushions that cover the bed. Before he can take advantage of his hands being free, Damen is on top of him, a hard and heavy and undeniable bulk. Not a threat, but a promise. He’s close enough that Laurent can see only the sidelong glint of moonlight in his eyes. As if to compensate, every other sense is heightened; Laurent can hear his own deafening heart and the soft pant of breath, and even through his clothes he can feel every point where Damen holds him down, as though they might melt together.

“Are _you_?” Damen says.

Damen presses down with one muscular thigh and Laurent shudders. An exhalation breaks neatly in half as it reaches his mouth; Damen kisses him as though in search of the rest of it, a kiss as firm and demanding as the weight of his body, and pleasure spills out through Laurent like a river over rocks. Nothing kindles fire under his skin like Damen’s strength, even mixed up as it is with the memory of clashing swords with Damen and losing. Of the poisonous thing that shattered inside Laurent when Damen held him down and proved the futility of Laurent’s years and years of single-minded training.

He doesn’t regret it. Sweeping away the shards of his former life, he made room for something new. And now, after so long waging a war of minds, deliberately downplaying his own physicality, keeping it like a wild cat on a leash to be used only as necessary…Damen’s hands on Laurent’s body are a revelation. Every time.

If it came down to strategy, Laurent would win, and they both know it. But this is not a dance of minds. This is the shared knowledge that Damen can subdue him but would never, ever want to hurt him. It is an impossible fact. An object from a legend.

Laurent relaxes into the bed, and into his own throbbing need. He turns his head to the side, and Damen’s lips brush obligingly over the tendons of his neck. Laurent savours the size of Damen’s hands, which are starting to loosen their grip on Laurent’s obediently trapped arms. For a moment his mind whites out with the memory, or possibly the anticipation, of Damen’s fingers inside him. Laurent doesn’t shift, not even the smallest fraction of an inch, to explore this loosening. He plots his next move.

“Of course you’re not,” Damen answers himself. His voice is a soft and affectionate burr against Laurent’s skin. Laurent considers, for the first time, whether the loosening is a trap in itself. The prospect of it thrills over him like snow.

“Of course not,” Laurent agrees, and strikes.


	40. Honeymoon part 3 (Laurent topping)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _since the first time i read damen thinking laurent have never you know fucked anyone and how they would be each other first in a way, i was wondering if you could write it? i just think it would be such a powerful and intimate moment._

It goes easier once Laurent stops thinking about what _he_ likes, when Damen is doing this to him, and starts thinking about what Damen likes in general.

Laurent watches Damen’s face as he moves his fingers, slowly. He is feeling something almost like frustration that he should be so unsure of himself. Laurent is used to doing things well, when he does them at all. The oil has trickled down to Laurent’s wrist, where it tickles, and Damen’s body is opening in slow slick increments.

Laurent concentrates on what he knows. Of all things, Damen likes it when Laurent _talks_ in bed; when something Damen has done manages to pull sounds, or words, from Laurent’s lips. Laurent is slowly, slowly learning to sink into pleasure and release the guard he’s set on his own tongue. Occasionally, now, he will not realise that he’s made a noise until he sees Damen react to it.

He runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth, and gathers his voice.

“I have thought about this,” he says. “Ever since you first mentioned it.”

“I’m glad you are my first,” Damen says.

“Your _only_ ,” says Laurent. He twists, from the wrist, as if he were holding a sword; as if disarming an opponent with the angle of his blade.

Damen groans and his body, the deep and secret heat of it, clenches around Laurent’s fingers. It’s fascinating. An urgent sweat like the pinch of a helmet grips Laurent’s temples as he imagines himself sheathed inside that heat.

“Laurent.” Damen looks up at him, with one of those private smiles that always take Laurent by surprise. “You can-–I am ready, I think.” His knees are bent up; now they fall to either side, exposing like a parted curtain his blood-thickened cock where it lies on his stomach. The defined ridges of Damen’s abdominal muscles tense and shift. Laurent has the sudden urge to bend over him, to swirl his tongue in the grooves between muscles, to taste the streaks of fluid leaking out onto Damen’s skin.

Laurent feels himself lick his lips, and then feels another clench as Damen notices him doing it. Laurent pulls his fingers carefully free.

“Yes,” Laurent says, uneven. “Yes.”

Damen tugs one of the flatter pillows to lie under his own hips, canting them up. The strength of Damen’s thighs is arousing in a whole new way, now, all that bulk of muscle spread out and shivering under Laurent’s hands. Laurent has to grip his own cock, as he lines himself up at Damen’s entrance; has to guide himself inside. Even after the time he spent, and the oil, it takes a little more force than he’d thought.

The sensation of Damen around him is a thing that requires…adjustment. Laurent stops, a few fingersbreadth inside, and bows his head. He struggles against a building fire that wants to explode as either sound or, too soon, a spilling of himself. Pleasure is like a lead weight on the back of his neck.

“You’re doing fine,” Damen says, soft.

“ _Don’t patronise me_ ,” Laurent says. He feels like a raw nerve, easily wounded, and he hears his voice come out too sharp. He forces himself to raise his head.

Damen doesn’t look offended. His eyes are dark, half pupil. He lifts a hand and thumbs over Laurent’s mouth.

“It’s new for both of us,” he says. His voice is strained. “We’ll do this together.”

Laurent shifts his weight, pushing carefully forward. In, and further in. He’d like to say something clever or grateful in reply, but it’s as though the sheer tight heat of Damen is strangling his vocal cords, in defiance of anatomy, and when he opens his mouth nothing comes out. Damen’s eyes flicker and fall closed, his lips parting, and Laurent has to lean over the join of their bodies to kiss him. The intimacy of it is like a punch beneath the ribs, or a fall from a horse. Laurent struggles to breathe.

_Your first. Your only._ It shouldn’t matter; Laurent knows that better than anyone. But part of him is selfishly delighted nonetheless.

“Damen,” he says. Their mouths are still close.

“It’s odd,” Damen says. He smiles. “But good. You feel good.”

Laurent straightens, kneeling upright. He makes a few small movements with his hips, experimenting, trying to find the position that will let him fall into a rhythm. With the heel of one hand he reaches down and strokes firmly along the full, hard length of Damen’s cock, flattening it to Damen’s stomach, making slow upwards motions along the fine, warm skin. The familiarity serves to centre Laurent’s awareness as well.

Damen gasps something in Akielon, a fierce and fervent jumble of syllables with blurred edges. The fire shoots up Laurent’s spine like a spasm, compelling him. 

He takes a breath, and begins to move.


	41. Honeymoon part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Staying at the summer palace in Ios for a week like Damen said they would :D_

Laurent’s balance is good. He doesn’t extend his arms to the side as he walks around the narrow edge of the fountain, though occasionally he flicks out a hand from the wrist in a minute adjustment. His skin is pink from exposure to days of sun, fountain-spray glints on his bare legs, and there is a mark beneath one corner of his jaw that makes Damen’s mouth water with memory.

Damen settles his shoulders against the tree, lazy and content. Laurent leaps lightly down from the ledge, and his feet follow instead the line of an eel picked out in blue tiles on the busy mosaic that spills out from the fountain’s base.

There’s something odd about the action; it’s as though Damen is watching an actor play Laurent, an actor who has the look of him down to perfection but has never seen him in real life. After a moment Damen realises this is because the action is entirely aimless. There is no purpose to it beyond enjoyment, and idle whim. For the first time Damen is seeing Laurent as he might have been as a boy; as he might have always been, had their histories been different.

“What?” Laurent says, not looking up from the ground.

Damen sees no reason not to tell him. A hint of embarrassment curls into the edge of Laurent’s mouth as Damen speaks. He pauses, not far from Damen, both sandaled feet still neatly within the bounds of the blue tiles.

“You keep mentioning that,” Laurent says neutrally. “What might have been.”

Damen stands up and goes to him. He takes one of Laurent’s hands and kisses the white fingers, then tugs it towards his chest, top and centre, where he holds it pressed beneath his own. Sometimes the only way to keep Laurent from slipping away is to pin him in place.

“I like seeing you happy,” Damen says.

Laurent says, “Do you still wish things could have happened differently, between us?”

It seems an easy yes, but these days at the summer palace have been gorgeous, slow, and Damen’s thoughts, also moving slowly, manage to catch on the question’s barbs where they might usually brush heedlessly past. He considers where they are. He considers the tiny rainbows forming in the spray; the scent of oranges on the breeze. The slow stirring of Laurent’s fingertips at the hollow of Damen’s throat.

“If I could spare you the pain of the past, I would,” Damen says, “but I wouldn’t do anything that might lead us away from this point. Here, right now.”

Laurent doesn’t waver. “Yes, it would be a shame to have missed this opportunity to bake my skin pink.”

But he slides his free hand into Damen’s hair, leans up and kisses him very, very lightly on the lips, a kiss that’s like the touch of eyelashes or the quietest of sighs, before tucking his sun-flushed face into Damen’s neck, to one side of his own trapped fingers.

Like everything Laurent does, the action is imperious in its own way. Damen does what it asks and wraps his arm around Laurent’s back, pulling his body close. Laurent’s hair smells good. The water in the fountain chuckles like a lively melody poured out of a flute, and the wind tosses leaves around their ankles.

Damen holds on.


	42. Nikandros and Laurent: modern AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _How about something where Nikandros gets exasperated that he keeps accidentally walking in on Damen and Laurent getting frisky? Alt version of the prompt if you want to go modern AU is Nik and Damen as college dorm roommates and Nik is pissed that he keeps getting sexiled from the room because Damen's boyfriend is always showing up._

When Nikandros emerged from his bedroom, wincing at the morning sunlight, Laurent was stretched out on the couch in the tiny living room. He was reading a magazine, and he was wearing one of Damen’s T-shirts. It came a fair way down his thighs. For the sake of his sanity, Nikandros was not going to think about whether or not Laurent was wearing anything underneath it.

“Sleep well?” Laurent enquired, not looking up.

Nikandros scrubbed at his eyes. “Fine,” he said, making sure the _fuck you_ was audible beneath it.

“What time did you get in?”

“Sometime between _harder, Damianos, fuck me harder_ and _oh God, oh God, I’m going to come_ ,” Nikandros said, too irritable to bother with either inflection or shame. When you were sexiled at eight o'clock, you did not expect to be met with that kind of nonsense on returning at just past midnight.

Laurent still didn’t glance away from his magazine, but a faint flush appeared on that winter-fine skin. “Damen has remarkable stamina.”

Nikandros bit down the next three rude comments that trooped obligingly forward in his mouth, and went to pour himself a glass of juice. It had been bad enough when it was just Damen’s exertions that were audible, but in the past month the previously-quiet Laurent had well and truly come out of his shell. So to speak. Nikandros was only grateful that their two-bedroom student apartment was at the end of a corridor and his own bedroom looked out onto the street, instead of sharing a wall with _another_ set of people who might be tempted to have athletic orgasms at the top of their lungs.

There was a knock on the apartment door.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” said Laurent almost at once.

There was also the fact that his best friend’s boyfriend had a habit of making Nikandros feel like a butler in his own damn home. Gritting his teeth, Nikandros opened the door. It was Atkis from the next apartment along. He had the tired and punchy look of a man dragged to the limits of his endurance, and he was holding out a couple of Xbox games and a plastic jug that Nikandros hadn’t seen since a party at the start of the year.

“Thought I’d better return these,” Atkis said. “And let you know that I’m moving. I requested a room transfer, and a single’s come up in Arles Hall.”

“Isn’t that a lot further from your classes?” Atkis was an engineering major, as far as Nikandros remembered.

“Yes,” Atkis said grimly. “But also a lot further from your roommate’s sex Olympics. And singles in the new wing of Arles don’t come up very often. I guess one of the rich law kids whose daddy bought their way onto the top of the housing list has now gotten daddy to buy them a penthouse in town instead.”

Nikandros accepted the games and the jug, wished Atkis well, closed the door, and then leaned against it and looked hard at Laurent.

“Your room’s in Arles, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Laurent looked up. His blue eyes, usually so sharp and dismissive, were outrageously limpid. “What a coincidence.”

Nikandros shifted to an outright glare.

After a moment, Laurent’s mouth twitched. “Well, it’s about time,” he said. “I was starting to wonder if I’d have to break into the place and have Damen fuck me over his kitchen table before he snapped.”

“You’re not getting rid of _me_ that easily,” Nikandros promised. No way in hell was he leaving his best friend alone at the mercy of this too-pretty blond fiend.

Laurent blinked. “Of course not. Damen likes you,” he said, and then added, “ _neighbour_ ,” in a voice sweet as syrup, before returning to his reading with a satisfied flick of the page.


	43. Age of sail/pirates AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _DAMEN/LAURENT AGE OF SAIL AU, LAURENT: BLOODTHIRSTY GENTLEMAN PIRATE KING, DAMEN: HIS CAPTIVE-TURNED-CONFIDANT, SECRETLY ALSO A PIRATE KING????_

This section of the hold reeks of salt, rotting ropes and stale piss. Crammed as they are into a space much too small for six adult men, Damen and his crew alternately grit their teeth and curse through the battle. Damen meets the grim eyes of every one of his men in turn, silently sharing with them the feeling of being so helplessly, infuriatingly passive, unable to do anything to affect the ship’s movements or the fight’s outcome. Unable to do anything at all except wonder if the next ball to splinter its way through the hull will take one of them with it, or allow seawater to come flooding into the cage of the brig.

When it’s finally over, Damen feels weak and almost sick from the endless wash of it over his nerves, like a high note just off-key, held and held and never allowed to sag back into tune. Physically, they came through it well. Pallas has a jagged scratch on his arm and Damen’s own ankle aches from one of the more sudden rolls, but that’s the worst of it. The din of sea battle is stripped back to the normal wooden groans of a ship and the faint slosh of waves, and the tense quiet in place of huzzahs indicates that His Majesty’s vessel the _Charity_ has come off second best in this engagement.

“What will happen to us?” asks Pallas. Of them all, he’s newest to the life; he’s never been taken prisoner before.

“That depends who it is, doesn’t it?” says Nikandros shortly.

“We won’t give you away, ca–-Kadmos,” Pallas says, only hesitating a moment on the false name. Damen gives him a nod, and then gestures for silence. Their single guard scrambled abovedecks to fight when it seemed the tide was turning against the naval sailors. They are alone behind the heavily locked door. There doesn’t seem much point in trying to force it open until the situation is clearer.

Listening hard, Damen catches a familiar cultured cadence of voice, a few moments before Nikandros swears, not quite under his breath; he must have caught it too.

“-–see for myself, shan’t I?”

“We’re hardly in the habit of carrying trade goods,” someone else protests.

“And I’m to take your word for it, I presume, as your captain was so good as to throw his papers into the galley fires rather than let them fall into my hands.”

The speaker has reached the foot of the ladder. He turns around, illuminated momentarily by both the shaft of natural light and the glow of lanterns, before moving forward into the hold. He’s a young man in sturdy boots and a black coat, plain but tailored to perfection, with a generous fall of skirts and a long line of silver buttons down the front. His hand rests on the ornate hilt of his sword, and his hat sports a single, perfect ostrich feather, but it’s the sheer arrogance of his bearing which proclaims his status.

“You can hardly have expected him to surrender our charts,” says the next man down the ladder, stiffly, and Damen recognises Lieutenant Flinders, the _Charity_ ’s first officer. His uniform is splattered with darkening blood. The task of showing the pirate captain around his new prize has clearly fallen to Flinders, and he has the naval captain’s sword swinging awkwardly from his own belt. Captain Harrison must be dead.

“You have prisoners,” is the next bombardment, still in that cultured drawl. “How surprising. Did you take their ship by accident, perhaps?”

The put-upon Lieutenant Flinders swallows visibly and says, “This is what remains of the crew of the pirate ship _Ios_.”

The pirate captain spares them barely a glance, contemptuous. “Do you know who I am, Lieutenant?”

“You are Laurent the pirate,” Flinders says. He adds, heroically finding neutral waters between respect and contempt: “Who styles himself the Prince of the Sea.”

“And what is the _Ios_ , to me?” Laurent’s voice could slice through a reinforced hull.

Flinders swallows again. He has a long, unfortunate neck which makes Damen’s sword-hand itch, and in which the Adam’s apple bobs like a barrel tossed overboard. “I had heard-–that is. Her captain, the pirate Damianos. It’s widely known that he’s an old enemy of yours.”

“Is he presumed to have perished with his ship?”

“We don’t know,” says Flinders. “One or two small boats escaped. They might not have gotten far; it was a rough swell, and dark. And surely, a captain of Damianos’s fabled courage would not abandon his crew and his ship so easily.”

“I don’t think much of the _fabled_ nobility of Damianos,” says the pirate called the Prince. He casts another glance over Damen and his men, then turns to the young man–-barely more than a boy-–who stands behind his left shoulder. The boy is wearing a jacket of brilliant red and gold silk, is bedecked in jewellery, and has an expression on his pretty face like his nose has encountered a pile of fish guts rotting in the sun.

“Have the prisoners brought aboard the _Arles_ ,” Laurent orders. “More hands won’t go amiss in the repairs. And if their loyalty outweighs their willingness to work, we can oblige them with pockets full of lead.” Laurent turns to leave. He pauses, at the foot of the ladder. “The large one,” he says. “Have him brought directly to my cabin.”

Damen feels Nikandros go tense beside him, and puts a calming hand on his arm.

The brightly dressed boy says, “Are you sure-–” but trails off in the face of Laurent’s stare.

“Keep the chains on him, obviously,” Laurent says, and vanishes abovedecks.

Damen relishes even the short trip from the _Charity_ to the _Arles_ , out in the open air, enjoying the peach-tinted evening sunlight and the wind on his face. Lamps are being lit on both ships. Damen is separated from his fellows-–he instructs them with a warning glance neither to object nor to do anything stupid-–and allows himself to be led to the captain’s cabin by the young man with jewels flashing at his throat and ears, who tells Damen offhandedly that if he makes any attempt to strangle or otherwise harm the Prince then he, Nicaise, will personally oversee him being slowly flayed and doused with seawater over the length of a full week.

“Aren’t you a charming one,” Damen says.

That gets him a poisonous look and a kick in the back of the knees as he’s shoved through the door, which closes and locks behind him. Damen looks around the cabin, and after a moment’s thought arranges himself near one small window, which is open a crack. Voices drift down and through it from the deck. Damen is unsurprised to hear that half the talk is the crew speculating on Laurent’s dubious taste.

“–-order that brute to fuck him in the same voice he uses to order the decks swabbed.”

“You mean you don’t know who that is?” The second speaker gives a superior snort. “Believe me, the Prince is more likely to slit his throat. Or, if he’s smart, he’ll demand the man’s weight in gold in exchange for his life. They say Damianos has the devil’s own luck; he’s taken more than two thousandweight in–-”

Damen closes the window, smiling to himself. After a little while a surly and well-dressed man with a pistol tucked through his belt comes into the cabin, carrying a shaving kit and a basin of steaming water, and eyes Damen in deep disapproval before directing him in snippy tones to submit to being made more presentable. The tug of a comb through his salt-crusted curls is a minor torture, but Damen nearly sighs with pleasure at the scrape of the blade along his jaw and the freshness of the water against his newly bare chin. He eyes the razor thoughtfully, and Laurent’s valet eyes Damen’s shackles just as thoughtfully, but neither of them bothers to call the other’s bluff. 

The valet disappears back through the door when he’s done. Damen paces back and forth, from one side of the large cabin to the other, enjoying the stretch of his legs too much to be in the mood for sitting.

When Laurent finally enters the cabin, he still looks perfectly put together. He flicks no more than a glance at Damen. He’s now carrying the naval captain’s sword; he sets it down, then unbuckles his own swordbelt along with both dagger and long blade, and lays it down as well. He unbuttons his severe coat, shrugs it off, and folds it over a chair. Lastly he removes his hat, then undoes the neat blond queue of his hair and runs his fingers through it, closing his eyes for a brief moment.

Damen says, “Your men are placing bets on whether you’re going to kill me or extort a ransom from me.”

Laurent raises his eyebrows. “And what do you think?”

Damen holds out his hands. “Why don’t you release me, and we’ll see who comes out on top?”

Now reduced to frothing shirtsleeves and a vest of embroidered black fabric, Laurent comes closer, closer. Close enough to touch. The glance he casts up through his lashes is as level and blue and dangerous as a becalmed sea, and Damen’s breath catches.

“Do you think I’d roll over for you, _Captain_ Damianos?”

“I think you’d enjoy it, sweetheart.”

Laurent’s hand flies out towards his face; with a clink of chain, Damen catches him by the wrist.

“Laurent,” he says, reproving.

“You deserve it,” Laurent hisses, “for getting yourself captured by His Majesty’s Navy.” His voice is deadly. “I had to hear about the _Ios_ when we made port in _Madeira_ , Damen. Nobody could tell me if you were still alive.”

“We boarded the _Charity_. Things became complicated.” Damen smiles. “I missed you too.” With sudden, deliberately inescapable speed, he loops the chain of the shackles around the back of Laurent’s neck, and pulls him in, so that their chests touch. The tarnished metal is rough and ugly against the loveliness of Laurent’s loose hair. Damen exerts a little more force, just to feel Laurent resist. “Nicaise seemed to think I was in danger of strangling you.”

“He’s protective,” Laurent says.

Just as suddenly, Laurent ducks under and out from the chain. He goes to his coat, flung over the chair, and rummages in its pockets. Damen sits down on the edge of the cot, relishing the softness of it after a week in the brig, and watches him.

“Protective or not, someone’s going to rip his earlobes off if he insists on wearing his share of every prize you take.”

“Several someones have already tried,” Laurent says, with cool pride. He comes back over to Damen with a key in his hand, and gestures impatiently for Damen to lift his wrists. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you, while you were thinking with your muscles, that we’re still supposed to be deadly enemies? You should have consulted me about this idiot plan.”

“I was a little busy,” Damen says.

Laurent’s still frowning. “We’ll call it seven days, maybe ten, for us to reach a grudging alliance. Another month at least for you to earn my trust. And then I suppose you’re going to want a new ship.”

“You just acquired one,” Damen points out, “courtesy of the Royal Admiralty.”

“I owe Orlant a ship,” Laurent says. “ _You_ are a captive. Spoils of war. _You_ haven’t earned one yet.”

One of the wrist cuffs is loose now. Damen leans in and nuzzles at the lacings of Laurent’s shirt collar, where the smell of his skin is hiding. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

He hears the click and feels the faint metallic shudder as the second lock opens. Laurent’s breath is coming faster. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“I think with my muscles, me,” Damen says blandly.

As soon as the shackles fall to the ground, freeing Damen’s hands, Damen reaches up with them: one in Laurent’s hair and one at his trim waist, pulling him close. Laurent gets one knee up on the cot, then the other, until he’s settled over Damen’s lap. Damen cups Laurent’s arse in his hands, then, locking their hips together in a slow, glorious roll.

“Spoils of war,” Laurent says again, low. Damen can’t suppress the shiver that runs through him. Laurent’s gaze is a pale fin in the water. “I have every right to take you apart with my bare hands.”

“I have a question,” Damen murmurs.

“Stop talking,” Laurent says. He takes Damen’s face between his palms and kisses him. Laurent’s kisses have never been as arrogant as the rest of him; this one is a homecoming, sweet and longing and honest. Laurent’s fingers are gentle on Damen’s jaw. Damen takes slow, hungry gulps of Laurent’s mouth, near-drunk with how much he’s missed this, feeling his own rising passion threatening to swamp every faculty of thought. He forces himself to pull his lips away, though he keeps tight hold of Laurent’s body.

Damen says, “My question is, did you want to know where I stashed the charts I stole from Harrison’s desk when we boarded the _Charity_ , or…”

Laurent freezes.

“You don’t want to know,” Damen goes on. “I see how it is. You don’t care about the new convoy routes. I lost a perfectly good ship to get them for you, and you won’t even give me another. I do not feel appreciated. I think I shall strangle you after all,” and he has to stop there, because Laurent is laughing helplessly into the mess of Damen’s hair.


	44. Great British Bake Off AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _laurent and damen masterchef au? or great british bake off._

Laurent can feel his concentration wavering, and has to take a deep breath while his hands stop shaking before he eases the second cake tier atop the base. He can count the hours of sleep he’s had over the past three nights on both hands, what with attending lectures and completing assignments and standing in the kitchen at 2am, making and remaking fondant flowers, writing and rewriting his recipe and plan, while Auguste tasted scraps and made coffee and directed not-quite-worried glances at Laurent over the top of his glasses.

It paid off. Laurent is sticking exactly to his plan, down to the minute, and the raspberry teacake is now a blushing masterpiece above the flawless Earl Grey sponge. It only remains for him to ice the top tier, a simple lemon cake with no frills and nowhere to hide, all technique: just the way Laurent likes it. He adjusts his grip on the bowl and whips the yellow-tinted buttercream, eyeing the lemon cake with a critical eye. The colour is not quite even, one side a _little_ browner than it should be, but the buttercream will hide that nicely.

Damen’s laughter rings out, and Laurent doesn’t need to look up to know that the cameramen will be gravitating towards it. Damen, with his photogenic face, his jaw somehow always smudged charmingly with flour, and his stupidly large arms emerging from the tight t-shirts he wears beneath his apron. Damen is a _builder_ from _Manchester_ and everyone can already tell he’s going to be the audience favourite, what with his unexpected cleverness and his dry humour, the barbs he throws out about Londoners-–never looking at Laurent but always, somehow, managing to imply that he’d like to be-–and his infuriating habit of spending two hours flirting indiscriminately with Mel and Paul, wandering over to taste someone else’s batter while bestowing praise and manly shoulder-claps, and then somehow still managing to produce a _perfect_ batch of sultana-studded scones, or a gingerbread version of the Parthenon that makes Mary Berry give one of her sharp, delighted inhalations.

Damen and Laurent have each won star baker three times in the past eight weeks. Damen’s signature bake yesterday was a clear standout, and Laurent produced a series of crisp and defined layers in the technical challenge that, he prides himself, you could have measured with a spirit level. So it comes down to today: the showstopper.

At the adjacent bench, Damen is adding final flourishes to his own tiered creation. Laurent leans an infinitesimal amount to the side in order to peer at it, interested in the pale green crumb that Damen’s sprinkling across it using some kind of stencil–-and then Laurent’s fingers catch in a slick smear of butter on the outside of the bowl.

Laurent says a sharp word that will have to be bleeped out, but it’s too late. The buttercream slips from his hands. The bowl lands, because that is the way of the universe, cream-side down.

Time stops. Laurent curls his hands into fists, then uncurls them. He stares at the pale, unvarnished base of the bowl, stamped with the potter’s mark. Cameras begin to converge on his bench like piranhas sensing blood.

With a merciless wrench of focus, Laurent turns back to his ingredients and takes stock of what remains. All right. Fine. No buttercream. It’s a lemon cake. He has ten minutes. He can make a simple drizzle, and then disguise the brownest part with some toffee shards left over from decorating the bottom tier. It won’t be perfect, but it will be elegant.

“What was it?”

Laurent looks up from where he’s spooning icing sugar into a fresh bowl. “What was what?” he snaps, a slip that he regrets instantly.

“Buttercream for the top tier, yeah?” Damen is crossing the central aisle of the marquee. “I heard you telling the judges about your idea. It sounded great. Here.”

The bowl that Damen is holding out is full of a pale, whipped substance.

“You know me, I’m no good at judging my quantities,” Damen says, with a shrug. “I always end up making twice as much as I need, just in case.”

Laurent picks up a teaspoon and reaches out to sample it. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting: salt? Some other kind of deliberate sabotage, the kind of thing he’d do himself? But the buttercream is beyond smooth, sweet and comforting, fragrant with just enough vanilla that Laurent can tell immediately it will elevate the citrus tang of his cake to something sublime.

“Take it, Laurent,” Damen says patiently. “Use it. I want to see what your cake looks like.”

Laurent blinks and lowers the spoon from his mouth. He steps closer in order to take the bowl. Damen is smiling down at him, but his smile has changed. Something about it is surprised; almost soft.

“Thank you,” Laurent says, prompted by the nearest enormous lens into remembering that his standing in the eyes of an avid Beeb viewership depends on his appearing to know how normal human politeness works.

“Besides,” Damen adds, “there’s no fun in beating you unless we’re both producing the best bakes we possibly can.”

“Were you created in a laboratory _expressly for television_?” Laurent demands, and Damen laughs.

The laugh that is irritating from a distance is somehow caressing, up close, and with a strange detached horror Laurent realises he is living through the precise moment when twelve million of his countrymen will see him go pink and breathless and stunned, nakedly longing, all the stress and discipline wiped from his face, simply because Damen has laid a hand on his arm and is gazing at him like he’s made of crème pâtissière and gold leaf.

“Fuck,” says Laurent.

Sue says, cheerfully, “Bleep.”

 

 

**~CODA~**

“Hurry up,” Damen calls, stretching his legs out into Laurent’s still-warm half of the couch. “You’re missing it.”

Laurent returns from the kitchen with his hands wrapped around a mug of steaming tea. He takes a considering sip, winces, and then sets the tea down on the table, carefully using a coaster. Damen didn’t even know he _owned_ coasters until Laurent started sleeping over. 

Laurent stares imperiously at Damen’s legs until Damen moves them back out of the way.

“I’m missing the-–oh. I see.”

On the screen, the camera zooms in on the fallen bowl of buttercream. Gasps from Sue; louder gasps, theatrical ones, from Jokaste, who pauses with a piping bag in hand to gaze at Laurent’s plight with a concern that would probably seem convincing if you didn’t know her. The camera cuts to Laurent’s blank face. Then to various reaction shots of other contestants. Damen watches his own brow crinkle and his eyes dart thoughtfully over his disaster of a bench.

Laurent picks up the remote and turns the television off just as Damen-on-the-screen is reaching for his spare buttercream.

“Laurent,” Damen protests.

“Living through it once was quite enough, thank you.”

Damen makes a feint for the remote; Laurent pulls it away. Even at his full arm’s length, however, Damen could easily grab it from him, and they both know it. Damen grins down at Laurent, who narrows his eyes and tosses the remote halfway across the rug with a defiant flick of his wrist. Before Damen can say anything, Laurent kneels up on the couch and lays a hand on Damen’s chest, and gazes at him. In the cosy light of the living room his eyes have gone the washed-out colour of violet cachous. There are smudges of saffron on his fingertips, and red wine has darkened the centre of his upper lip.

“It’s your choice, Damen,” Laurent says, perfectly pleasant in a way that sends the hairs rising on Damen’s arms. “You can either watch me fall in love with you, or you can take advantage of the fact that I did.”

Damen feels just as he did when Sue announced him as the season’s winner: as though he’d had all the air knocked out of him, and so happy he felt like it would burst from his chest in a beam of honey and light.

“You…” Damen says, like an idiot.

“I’m waiting,” says Laurent, but there’s a smile starting to form on his lips, and Damen surges forward to taste it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #here is a secret: #damen is an amazing residential contractor #who builds award winning houses #(he and nikandros have their own company) #but laurent heard BUILDER #and saw the flannel shirt #and dismissed him on day one #BAD MOVE LAURENT


	45. spies AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _kingsman au :D? or just generally an au where damen and laurent are ~super secret spies~._

“I could always attach myself to a Contiki tour.”

 _“No, you’d stand out_ ,” says Nicaise, “ _you don’t drink enough_ ,” but his voice sounds thin, without the usual dry venom. For a moment Laurent wonders if his earpiece is coming loose, but he’s too professional to lift a finger and check immediately. He waits until he’s lifted a pair of sunglasses from a passing man’s shirt pocket, and brushes his ear as he slips them on. The earpiece is fine, still invisibly deep. Nicaise must actually be worried. That’s a bad sign.

“What went wrong back there?” Laurent demands, hardly moving his lips as he strides along, forcing a casual sightseer’s pace even as his heart percusses in his chest and his legs are itching to run.

 _“We don’t know. We’re trying to work that out_.”

“Something spooked the minister’s security guards. He shouldn’t have been moved that early. Is there someone else in play? Are there any other agencies on the ground here?”

 _“Yes, please keep asking me questions_ ,” says Nicaise. “ _That is obviously what I meant when I said ‘we don’t know’.”_

Laurent rolls his eyes. Inwardly.

At least, he thinks, he completed the mission. If he blinks at the sun he can still see, in hazy relief against his eyelashes, the image of the minister slumping to the ground. The first slow seep of blood from his head.

 _“Fuck_ ,” Nicaise swears then. “ _We’re monitoring the police channels, and they’re already searching for foreigners traveling alone. I’m patching Auguste in.”_

“ _Don’t_ patch-–”

 _“Laurent_ ,” says his brother. “ _You need cover. Now.”_

“No, really?” says Laurent, pulling a triangular scarf in creamy gauze from a market stall as the stallkeeper is distracted taking payment from another customer. He drapes it around his neck and keeps going. “How lucky I am to have you telling me what to do.”

 _“Don’t be glib_ ,” Auguste says. He sounds tense. “ _I can have an extraction team there in a few hours.”_

“It’s fine,” Laurent says. “I’m almost back at the hotel. I can hole up until this evening, and then–-”

Immediately after stepping into the hotel, Laurent slams into the back of a large someone who’s standing just inside the doors. Laurent automatically extends the action, making it look like clumsiness, for just long enough to confirm the subtle outline of a gun under the leather jacket, and then rights himself and steps to stand beside…whoever this is.

The inconvenient obstacle in Laurent’s path is a man with black hair and the solid, easy stance of someone who’s probably never had to give way in his life. He barely moved an inch when Laurent collided with his back. He’s standing with his hands slightly raised, gazing in wary bafflement at the police. Who are in the hotel foyer already, and whose hands are on their own weapons.

“Sorry about that,” Laurent says, in the drawling accent he’s adopted for this persona.

The tall man looks down at Laurent. Laurent pulls the sunglasses off-–baring his eyes in an act of ruthless, impulsive vulnerability-–and looks back. His mind is flying, calculating the odds. He has to weigh the likelihood that a strange man _with a concealed gun_ will recoil in panic if Laurent plays this particular card, and the danger of drawing a civilian into his cover, and how immensely suspicious it’ll look if the man doesn’t play along, versus the likelihood that Laurent can bluff his way through this on his own. In the presence of the police. Who are searching for sole travelers.

While all of this is arranging itself in whip-fast columns of probability in Laurent’s head, there’s something muddier and more primitive trying to happen in his gut. The stranger’s curious eyes are the colour of spiced rum, and he smells like coffee and leather, and at the hollow of his throat is a tiny golden pendant in the shape of a lion’s head, strung on a thin chain. Laurent can imagine hooking his forefinger through that chain. He can imagine approaching this man in a rooftop bar, elsewhere in the heavy evening heat of this city-–not for a job, just for himself-–and tilting his head and demanding to be bought a drink in the imperious tone that doesn’t often fail him.

He lets all of this surge beneath his skin like a current, and ignores it. It’s not relevant to the calculation.

 _“Don’t do anything stupid, Laurent,”_ says Auguste sharply.

Laurent is not stupid. Laurent is a man with gunshot residue on his hands, no alibi, and a knife strapped to his leg beneath these linen trousers. Laurent is on the verge of placing his life in the hands of a stranger who might die because of it.

Laurent bites his lip and the man’s eyes drop to it, and the probability ticks over, just enough.

“Hello, lover,” says Laurent. He slides an arm around the man’s waist, low enough to avoid the gun holster, and leans in to drop a fond, hot kiss on the corner of the stubbled jaw. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long.”

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